The Marauders
by 30CK
Summary: Naruto finds more than just the Forbidden Scroll on his excursion into the Hokage's private library; he finds a scroll with the consciousnesses of former Konoha pranksters sealed within, ones prepared to help a fellow prankster in any way they can.
1. Chapter 1

Before this thing gets started, it has come to my attention that some of my readers were a little...suspicous of this fanfiction at first. So, I have a note for first-time readers, just to banish any doubts you may have about 'The Marauders'. So here it is, Italicized and Bolded to make it easier to spot. Ready?

**_THIS IS NOT A NARUTO x HARRY POTTER CROSSOVER. I only use the idea of the Marauders Map, nothing more, nothing less._**

And now, without further ado about nothing...

* * *

The Marauders _ a Naruto fanfiction by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

Chapter One

* * *

Naruto stood and stared around him in awe, a feeling of growing accomplishment rising in his chest. He had made it. Holy _kami_, he had actually _made it!_ An overjoyed grin stretched his lips wide and that feeling in his chest was warmer than a rising sun shining upon his face.

He had never done something like this before. Really, he hadn't fully expected to sneak in – he figured that the ANBU, and the guards, and the security measures would have been a lot harder to avoid. But no, they hadn't.

The ANBU had acted just like they always had – dangerous and intimidating, yes, but no immediately helpful or useful special abilities like they were rumored to have and no real competence other than the aforementioned intimidation factor.

The guards had been very accommodating – they had pointed a badly-henged botched bunshin towards the nearest restroom; it had only made it a meter or two before its failing state of being began to take effect, and ended up vomiting bunshin-bile all over one of their legs. So distracted had they been by the impressive imaginary spew – although they didn't know it yet was so – that they didn't even notice the sickly black-haired girl with the funny-looking nose run away at a full-tilt run, nor did they notice a small blonde-haired boy climb into the ceiling through a small panel. When they began ranting and bemoaning the fate of their clothing, they missed the muffled thumps and scratches that came from a meter above their heads, their source hidden oh-so-cleverly by a thin ceiling of plaster, cheap-ass fake wood, and metal.

The security measures were sparse, if anything. There had been a few traps that littered the hallway which had been made for someone of a much taller stature than the one-meter-something-tall blonde prankster that passed them. There were some seals that had been written on the walls of that same hallway, which, as he'd found out through the scientific method, had really done something weird with his chakra; he could feel something different about it, and when he tested it out with a quick bunshin, the thing turned out perfectly. He had _never_ done one perfect on his first try. Whatever those seals did, they actually helped him out – though he was pretty sure that wasn't what they were supposed to do; it wouldn't really make sense for them to make it easier for someone to perform jutsu. But he had always known he was a bit of a special case in performing jutsu, especially the little things, for some strange, obscure reason.

When he got to the end of hallway, there had been more traps surrounding the door, including a pressure pad-like thing that set up a barrier over the door if someone stepped in front of it, a hole in the door that shot out little metal needle-things that smelled _really_ funky, and kunai that flew out from one side of the wall only to hit the other side and disappear as if it had never existed. It would have been really cool if he had more time to check that out but, unfortunately, he was on a fairly tight schedule and had had to string up some wires, kunai, and a good portion of the carpet in order to get past the sensor and through the door. The door, as it had turned out, had seals lining it as well, and they had shone a dark blue color when he had walked through. They had flashed real bright, too, like when someone takes a picture and you can't see anything but white for a few seconds before it dissolves into spots.

But then he had walked into the middle of the room and looked around and grinned like a fool. Because he had _made it_; he had made it into the Shadow Scroll Room – one of the most coolest places in the entire Tower, practically the Old Man's _library_, where he and all the Hokages before him had put all the most secret, most rare, most _bad-ass_ scrolls in order to keep them safe and away from prying eyes. The Old Man had taken him in here once, when he was, like, six or something. He couldn't really remember all that well.

But anyway!

He was in probably _the _secretest room in the Tower – which really brought up the question as to why it wasn't better protected or something, but that question would really only cause him to think a lot and go off track and take his attention of his mission, so… - and all he had to do was grab one measly scroll and bolt outta there like a bat out of hell, or like himself after he pranked that coat-wearing psycho-jounin chick. Dealing with her had been the most horrifying experience to date, and that was including the one time that Ichiraku's had closed in the middle of the day because they ran out of noodles.

After a quick full-body shiver of mind-numbing terror, a reaction garnered on recounting both past events, the silly grin made its way back up onto his face. The room was big – almost as big as his entire apartment, he reckoned – and it was filled with rows and rows of huge, dark-wood shelves with scrolls covering each one. There were cupboards and things pushed up against the walls, stacked on top of each other, that held even _more_ scrolls, and there were even a few shelves attached to the _ceiling_. That was just plain _awesome_.

He dashed to the nearest shelf and began looking over the contents. Every scroll was stacked in neat, even rows, despite their varying sizes – some bigger than his entire body, some smaller than his hand – and each scroll had a small stretch of paper tacked onto the wood just below it so anyone could read what the scrolls were about, or what they had in them (Iruka-sensei had mentioned some stuff about 'storage seals' once, where you could write some words and symbols on paper and do _something_ with chakra and put, like, a kunai or a sword or even something as big as a house into the paper).

Naruto scanned the nameplates and quickly decided that there was no real order to their placement; he had started with the very middle of the rack and gone to the right, his eyes flicking over the various titles:_ Konoha – Roster – Genin, Chuunin – years of the Nidaime, Yondaime, Sandaime; Konoha – Missions – S Class – year of the Yondaime; Elemental Countries – Intel – Suna; Konoha – Major Clans – Uchiha, Hyuuga; Konoha – Restricted – Forbidden –_ holy crap, that was it! He paused for a moment just as he was about to grab it – the damn thing was seriously labeled 'Forbidden'? You'd think the Old Man would kind of want to _hide_ the fact that it was forbidden. Hadn't he ever heard that saying about the forest and the trees (something about plane sites?) He was about to pull it into his waiting arms when he paused once more. He looked around the room again.

He had what he came here for, what he had needed, but…well, _come on!_ He was in the Hokage's _private freaking library! _He could find out stuff in here that he might never _ever_ discover for the rest of his _life!_ There were scrolls that had cool jutsu, information about all the shinobi _ever_, information on the really powerful bad guys of other lands, information on the really powerful _good guys_ of other lands; there had to be scrolls of weapons, and scrolls of badass secret organizations and stuff, and scrolls that gave histories of the previous Hokages. Who's to say he couldn't find out everything he had _ever_ wanted to know about being a shinobi if he just looked?

He looked back at the roll of paper lying just under his fingertips and frowned thoughtfully.

Besides, who's to say that the Forbidden Scroll was the coolest or most badass or most helpful ninja-wise out of all of the rest of them, anyway? 'Forbidden' wasn't always a direct translation to 'epic awesome' – just usually. But any one of the scrolls around him, any one out of the other hundred, or thousand, or however the _heck_ many were actually in this room, could easily be ten times cooler, or a hundred times cooler, than the Forbidden Scroll ever could; any other scroll could have way better information, or more badass moves, or better-kept secrets. So if that were true, why would Mizuki-sensei want him to get that particular scroll?

Wait a minute – it was all a _test!_

Gods above, he was taking all of that _way _too seriously. The Forbidden Scroll was marked so plainly so it would be easier for him to find it. The security must have been dropped down a little so he wouldn't get torn apart while trying to enter the room. There must have been a few fake guards standing in the regular's posts, and same with the ANBU – that was why they were so easy to get past, and so very, very incompetent.

No, wait, scratch the fake ANBU – they were always like that. Stupid bastards.

But that explained why everything had seemed so much easier than it was supposed to be: the Old Man must have had this as a final do-or-die kind of test for the students that couldn't quite make it past the last Academy tests, a last rope for the flailing dunces to grab hold onto and pull themselves into the ranks of Konoha Shinobi. Mizuki-sensei was really cool for giving him this chance. He'd have to thank him a lot when he got to the forest with the scroll.

His hand withdrew from the Forbidden Scroll and fell to his side, and he began scanning the rows once again.

_Elemental Countries – Roster – Nukenin – years of the Sandaime, Yondaime; Roster – Government – The Council of Fire – years of the Sandaime; Konoha – Organizations – ROOT; Konoha – Hokage – History…_ There were scrolls packed to the brim with high-level jutsu, of low-level Academy jutsu, scrolls that gave information on the relative economy of Konoha, rosters of the members of ANBU that dated all the way back to the Shodaime, lists of the most influential civilians in three of the most influential Elemental Countries, storage scrolls that were said to hold some of the most precious possessions of the Yondaime. There were maps of the entirety of Fire Country – maps that showed just the villages, maps that showed the land and how high or low it was in places, maps that showed secret tunnels going from the heart of Konoha to several outposts at the edges of their territory, maps that had known hiding places of Nukenin circled in red and frequent meeting places of them highlighted in bright blue. There were other maps that showed optimal points of attack on Cloud Country that would completely destroy their ability to fight back, there were maps dating back to the Great Shinobi War that showed detailed paths their forces took throughout the Countries, and where they stopped to rest or fight. There were maps that traced nearly every underground tunnel and passageway in Iwa, maps that revealed safe paths through the bowels of their many, many mountains, and maps that actually showed what precious metals and gems could be found in Earth Country and where specifically they could be most easily and readily obtained. There was a scroll on the Nine Great Demons, the Nine Tailed Beasts, the Bijuu, and another about the hundreds of lesser demons and monsters that hunkered on the outskirts of civilization. There were –

"Huh?"

Naruto stopped and tracked his eyes back a few panels. There was _Elemental Countries – Organizations – Akatsuki, _and _Konoha – Equipment – The Everything Scroll of Weapons_-

(and, about five kilometers away from where he was standing, a certain brown-haired young woman shuddered and unconsciously rubbed her legs together, moaning softly in her sleep)

- and _Konoha – Psych Evaluations – years of Shodaime, Nidaime_, and then there was _'?'._ Naruto frowned. He looked just above the nameplate. There was definitely a scroll above it. It was kind of small, from the looks of it, but it was most certainly there. Any information on the paper, however, was most certainly _not_ there; no name, no description, no categories or subcategories for it to be sorted under, no year of discovery or author – nothing at all, except for a question mark.

Well, that was interesting.

He stood on his tip-toes – the little scroll was on one of the higher shelves – and eased the scroll from its seat with the very tips of his fingers. It came out with a spray of dust, and he coughed and stumbled back, almost dropping it from his unstable grip. He knocked into one of the other shelves and grunted in pain, making a face of disgust when he managed to regain his balance.

"Gross." He coughed again, once, before gathering saliva in his mouth and spitting out a dark wad of dirt, dust, mold, and spit. He stared at it when it hit the wood flooring, amused and disgusted at both its color and consistency and decided to add on to his previous statement. "_Major_ gross." And then he raised his eyes from the floor to the scroll and smiled. "But at least I got ya, right, Question-mark Scroll?" he asked, grinning at the rolled-up length of paper in his hands. The scroll was less than three hand-lengths high, and a good one-and-a-half hand-lengths wide. He gave it a quick squeeze, only to find the paper beneath his fingers didn't give way – that meant that there was a lot of paper on that scroll, and really tightly packed, too. All in all, though – he held it out in front of him, raising an eyebrow – it looked more like one of the scrolls that Iruka-sensei handed out in class sometimes than a super-duper epic-awesome ultra-secret scroll.

Eagerly, he pulled hard on the small wooden pull attached to the end and lifted it into the air. "Huh," he commented. "No zap-zap…" He had touched a scroll that he wasn't supposed to when he was in the Old Man's office one time when he was younger, and he had gotten a rather nasty shock. The Old Man had told him that some of the more private, secret scrolls had various security measures on them to keep them from being easily stolen. "…it's not burning…" After the shocking scroll, the Old Man had grabbed a blank scroll and written something down on it, did something with his chakra, and told Naruto to pick it up. He had, and it went up in flames – without the fire! The paper had blackened and crinkled away and left a pile of ash in its wake. "…no traps…" The Old Man had then explained that some of the more paranoid, bad-guy kind of people tended to seal kunai, or shuriken, or something like it into the scroll, which activated when the scroll was picked up or opened. Naruto watched as the Question-mark Scroll rolled open harmlessly. "…no other safety measures." Weird.

His bright blue eyes flew over the paper when it slowed to a stop. There was…there was nothing there. He looked at it carefully from the very top to the very bottom. Nothing. Nada. There was only blank paper – not even a speck of ink marred the surface. His lips drew downwards into a scowl.

Well, that was annoying.

He crouched and set the scroll down on the floor. Still frowning, he lifted a hand and placed it on yellowing paper. Once he had reaffirmed that, yes, it was paper, and no, neither touching it or scratching at it with a nail revealed anything, he shrugged and splayed both hands flat out on the surface. The only real thing he could think of that would make anything show up would be chakra, so he sent a short pulse down his arms and out from his palms. The paper shimmered slightly as his visibly-blue chakra spread out over it. His eyes roved across the scroll looking for something, anything. He made a whining noise in the back of his throat when he didn't see anything. There was nothing.

And then, suddenly, there was. In the middle of the section he was looking at – as a brief tug and the prior feel of the scroll showed that there was a lot more paper inside – what looked like a small splotch of ink had appeared. He poked it. When nothing happened, he poked at it with a little bit of chakra in his finger. Still nothing. Growling, he slammed both hands onto the paper, hands spread wide, and pumped out an inordinate amount of chakra into the paper. When there was _still_ no reaction, Naruto closed his eyes, loosened his jaw, and sighed heavily.

Damn. He scrunched his face up in thought for a few minutes before sighing again and, in one deft movement, rolled the Question-mark Scroll back up and stood. He definitely wanted to keep it. After all – if it wasn't showing anything, then there must be a _reason_ nothing is being shown. And that was a very intriguing thought – a very intriguing thought that he really_ didn't have time for_. Shit, he had to get going!

Okay, so he had this little scroll, and he needed to get the Forbidden Scroll to graduate. He couldn't very well take one out of the Tower, and then come back to get the other, and _then_ get to the forest in the allotted time…and he definitely couldn't spend any more time in the room. The only option was to take both scrolls – he couldn't carry both of them at the same time and run, that would be really awkward…

He snapped his fingers and dug a hand into one of the lower pockets on his orange cargo pants. He pulled out a length of rope and dropped it to the ground, the Question-mark Scroll a moment after. He quickly went over to the first shelf and snatched up the Forbidden Scroll. He went back to his previous spot and bent over, easily throwing the Scroll and rope on top of his back and securing it there with a few sloppy knots and a hard tug. Then he picked up the smaller unknown scroll and cradled it under one arm.

He took one last look around the room, gave a short jump and – pleased to find that the Forbidden Scroll stayed where it was supposed to, how it was supposed to – ran from the room.

The seals around the doorway flashed blue behind him, lighting up the Shadow Scroll Room one last time, before they fell silent, black as death.

* * *

It wasn't until later – much later, after he went to the forest, learned Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (truly a badass technique), "surprised" Iruka-sensei (okay, so technically his favorite teacher found _him _– but who's really counting?), got attacked by that bastard fake-sensei Mizuki (and then he attacked Iruka-sensei! Can you say "No mercy"?), found out that he was a jinchiruuki of the strongest Tailed Demon there was (which was a little bit upsetting, but honestly it explained a lot; besides, it was pretty kick-ass that, if he had to have one, he got the biggest and the baddest one that ever existed), totally kicked that bastard fake-sensei Mizuki's _ass_ (he deserved it!), became a late graduated of the Shinobi Academy and practically smothered Iruka-sensei in a hug (screw what everyone else thought – Iruka-sensei was goddamn awesome), apologetically handed the Forbidden Scroll to the Sandaime afterwards (cranky old man – he was just pissed that he got his nappy time interrupted), and weaseled some ramen out of Iruka-sensei (force of habit) – when he was lying in bed, attempting to sleep but wholly unable to due to his pure, unfiltered joy and excitement, did Naruto remember Question-mark Scroll.

He grinned to himself.

"Well," he said quietly, climbing off his mattress and padding barefoot across his wooden flooring, "no time like the present, I suppose." He chuckled. "Can't sleep anyway." He walked into his bathroom and faced his mirror. Putting his hands onto it, one on each side, he gently pried the pane of glass from its place. It came off of the wall with a _clank_ and a bit of plaster, revealing a relatively large hole in the wall; the mirror was set off to the side, next to the toilet. Naruto stuck both arms into his bathroom wall and reached up. His fingers reached past two wooden beams and brushed against paper. They curled around the cylinder and he carefully drew it out, steering it around the wall's innards and settling it carefully into his arms. He smiled again.

"Gotcha."

He carried it into the kitchen, where he set it down on his mostly-unused dining table before turning away and snagging a healthy cup of cup ramen. Making quick work of its wrapping and top, he set it on the counter and put a dented kettle of water on the stove. He went back to the table – a watched pot never boils, you know – and unrolled the unknown scroll. The inkblot-looking marking had since vanished, so Naruto placed his hands on the paper and let loose a stream of chakra. It appeared once more.

"There we go," he muttered, scratching his cheek absentmindedly. Okay, so he was able to get this bit of ink to show up with chakra; it stood to reason that more would be revealed as more chakra was added to the paper. But he had already tried that… His features scrunched up in his 'thinking very hard' face and he put his chin in his hand, thus forming his 'thinking very hard' pose.

Maybe the reason nothing showed up was because he was sitting in the Shadow Scroll Room at the time. Naruto nodded to himself. It would make sense for the scrolls to have some degree of protection upon them – not being able to read them whilst inside that room could possibly be one. After all, it didn't look like the scroll had any other safety measures; not when he had first checked it, and certainly not now. He nodded again. Okay, so if the scroll wouldn't react inside the room, it should hopefully react outside the room. He _was_ outside the room. So…

Naruto spread his hands against the paper and pushed blue-tinted chakra down his arms and into the paper. Almost immediately, the black splotch began to grow, spread dark tendrils across the yellowing surface it resided on. The ink kept twisting and looping around itself, coloring the paper dark until the revealed space was a solid expanse of black.

He arched a brow and unrolled the scroll a bit more.

Still black.

He began yanking the paper away from the roll in large – and exaggerated – movements, spilling parchment off the chipped table and onto his hardwood floor. Hand-lengths quickly became meters as more and more paper folded into the swiftly-growing pile.

And the scroll wasn't getting any smaller.

Naruto growled. Not only was the paper still _black_, but if it continued going on like this, half of his apartment would be an ocean of ink and paper.

"Woah!" Naruto said, forsaking the scroll and grabbing hold of the length that had just flown out. Some paper, still moving, crumpled up behind his hands as it stopped. Naruto frowned in concentration as he looked at what he was clutching. The blackness had been continuing, and then, suddenly, there was a large yellow-white strip that cut it off, followed by a column of black – about two hand-lengths wide and spanning from the top of the paper to the bottom. Following that column was the yellow-white of the regular paper again.

He pulled some more on the scroll and was pleased to find that there didn't seem to be any more black past that last column.

Good.

He turned his attention back to the thick line of black and stared at it. It looked like it was shimmering every few seconds. He poked it. And then he poked it again with a little bit of chakra on his finger. The black ink flared a bright blue, like a flash of light in a dark room.

Naruto just stared. "Okay…"

He almost screamed when a shrill whistle came from behind him, and he whirled around – only to see that it was the dented kettle that now undoubtedly held boiling water. Cursing under his breath and trying to stay his rapidly beating heart, he hopped over to his ramen and poured the water in. He set the lid back down on the cup and put a pair of chopsticks on top of that to hold it down. Then he turned back to Question-mark Scroll.

Some of the ink had faded from view, large patches vanishing and leaving smaller splotches alone. Those smaller splotches shrank even further, until delicate curves, loops, and edges began to form. Figures began to reveal themselves – words quickly after. Naruto read it aloud, eyebrows raised.

"_Sparky-san, Hawkeye-san, Irons-san and Spitfire-san_

_Perpetrators of Various Acts of Mischief, Prank Masters in Word and Deed_

_are very proud to present_

_The Shinobi's Scroll"_

Naruto dropped one eyebrow and stared critically at the message, even as another one began to form beneath it, blue-tinged ink – blue from the ink binding with his chakra, he supposed – rising to the surface of the paper in loopy, flowing words.

_Sparky would like to be the first one to greet the newest inheritor of our scroll, and would like to forewarn you that Hawkeye-san is about to be both rude and suspicious of you._

The eyebrow that was still raised only arched higher. Seriously, what the hell? He watched as the words faded from view, almost immediately followed by another set, in different handwriting; the strokes were quick, sharp, professional.

_Hawkeye would like to inform Sparky no Baka that he has every reason to be suspicious of the one who now holds this scroll, as it was being kept in the Shadow Scroll Room the last time he checked._

That sentence, too, disappeared, replaced with large, childish handwriting.

_Irons would like to voice his opinion that Sparky-kun still writes like a girl._

Naruto snorted, and another line appeared – crooked, sloppy, and fairly difficult to read.

_Spitfire would like to remind Hawkeye that it could be a new Hokage, or a chuunin or jounin with Kage-ranked clearance._

_Hawkeye wishes Spitfire-chan would quit talking to Sparky no Baka, as it seems to be slowly killing her brain cells._

"Hey," Naruto grunted aloud. "That's not very nice…"

The writing was wiped clean, and stayed that way. Naruto frowned, absentmindedly grabbing his ramen – which should be ready by now – and shoving a bite into his mouth. His face slowly contorted into his "thinking very hard" expression.

This was weird. What exactly was Question-mark Scroll? Or, rather, what exactly was _The Shinobi's Scroll_? Based on what the opening had implied, those four names that were given – Hawkeye, Spitfire, Sparky, and Irons – were people. It had stated that they were 'prank masters' who had a hand in 'various acts of mischief'. Okay, so there were four people however-many years ago who liked to pull pranks and sneak around and make other people look like idiots. They sounded pretty cool.

But then the names…they were, like, TALKING! The people listed were talking – to him, to each other, to themselves – as if they were real! That meant – that meant…

…what the hell _did_ that mean?

He took another mouthful of noodles and chewed thoughtfully.

Well, there couldn't be people sealed into the scroll – that wasn't possible, after all. Oh, but that did answer the unspoken question of why it had so much paper but was actually extremely small in size: the extra paper was getting sealed into the wooden tube roll in the middle.

Naruto nodded proudly before getting back on track.

So if it wasn't the people themselves sealed into the scroll, it was…their minds…? He made a face at the thought of brains being sealed into a piece of paper. Their minds, their…personalities. But how would that be possible? It sounded even harder than sealing a person – a person has a body, has substance _to_ be sealed, and thoughts and personality…not so much. You couldn't _feel _thoughts, or emotions. So what…

He snapped his fingers.

The Yamanaka family! They were good with that whole mind-jutsu stuff. Maybe they would know? He made a mental note to ask that one blonde girl in his class about it – assuming he could get a word in while she was fawning over the Bastard.

He saw something move, and he looked back down at the paper in front of him. Another message was rising to the surface in the loopy style of Sparky, as it/he/she was called.

_Sparky would like to apologize to the new owner on Hawkeye-san's behalf, because he isn't about to do it himself._

What the-?

Did that…_Sparky_ – just respond to what he said? It can hear him? And understand him? What the hell!

So these…personalities, these minds, these…consciousnesses bound to the paper could react to the situation happening around them…it…them? They knew what had happened and they…_thought_ about it! And they're answering in response to what he had done!

_Irons would like to add that Hawkeye-teme lives on insulting people instead of breathing like the rest of us._

They had personalities. That was obvious. Some liked some, some didn't like others (read: Hawkeye); they interacted with each other. And with him. Seamlessly. As if they were there with him, standing in front of him and they were all talking amongst themselves.

_Spitfire would force-feed Hawkeye spiders and toilet water for dinner for calling her 'Spitfire-__**chan**__' if she could._

Naruto laughed out loud, his train of thought getting neatly severed in the face of the response given. This Spitfire chick sounded _awesome_!

No sooner had his laugh ended than he saw a new line of text waiting to be read: _Hawkeye would like to tell the reader that spiders and toilet water for a meal is in no way amusing, and would he please stop laughing._

Naruto gave the consciousness of Hawkeye the one-fingered salute.

_Sparky thinks that the owner is quite a character, to be flipping off Hawkeye-san – he can be a rather scary person. Of course, it would be much more intimidating to meet Hawkeye-san in person, no doubt._

_Spitfire would like to suggest that the owner track Hawkeye down and deliver him his punishment for her, as she is stuck as a few sentences on a piece of paper,__ and is rather incapable of doing it herself at the moment._

Naruto grinned.

_Irons has a distinct feeling that the new owner is planning to do exactly as Spitfire-san asks; whether the reason being because she is a girl – wherein he does anything the opposite sex asks him to – or because she has appealed to his disaster-loving, pranking nature – which I sincerely hope that he owns in spades._

Naruto's smile shrunk a little, and he gave a short, bitter-sounding chuckle. "Well," he said, deciding that he may as well join the conversation they were having with him, "It's been over five years since a girl last asked me to do something – aside from the random old lady who wants me to drop dead or just go and leave Konoha or something like that, the stupid old biddies – and that entire talk and promise was thrown out the window in less than a year." He had promised Sakura-chan, when he first saw her, that he would be her friend, and she had done the same. Shortly after, she had met Yamanaka Ino, the other blonde in his class, and he was easily cast aside in favor of girl talk, looking good, and Uchiha Sasuke. That had hurt more than he ever cared to admit, but he never really gave up trying to get her favor back. Nothing he had ever done had worked. "I'm not really going to jump the gun and just go around trusting anybody anymore." Not after that bastard fake-sensei Mizuki, anyway. Not after he almost killed Iruka-sensei.

_Spitfire offers the owner her condolences – it doesn't sound like he's had the best of lives._

"Yeah, you could say that…" Naruto replied, a little wistfully.

_Irons is wondering if, just to be sure, this means that the new owner is __**not**__ going to go and hunt Hawkeye-teme down and feed him spiders and toilet water._

"Oh, hell no," the blonde answered, laughing. "I'll find him and stuff spiders down his throat just 'cause it sounds like something fun to do!" He paused mid-laugh. "Assuming, of course, he did something worse than just give someone the wrong honorific suffix," he added seriously.

_Irons nods furiously, stating that Hawkeye-teme deserves that and more, and not just for being a jerk and trying to cozy up to the one person who doesn't want people cozying up to her._

"Am I going to get any _specifics_, other than 'he was a jerk'? I mean, just basing this off of what he's said in the past few minutes, I'd agree with you in a heartbeat, but do you have anything especially incriminating?"

_Irons certainly has a story for you…_

* * *

Sarutobi Hiruzen gently and reverently placed the Forbidden Scroll in its rightful place upon the shelf, and gave it a soft pat before turning away and walking back towards the door of the Shadow Scroll Room. The moment his body passed the doorframe, the tens of hundreds of delicately-etched seals upon the wood exploded into color, leaping from their quiet, inactive black into a cacophony of green, yellow, and blue.

He, and his thoughts, froze.

He took a step back into the room and watched as the seals lit up once more before settling down and hiding in the shadows again.

The seals…the seals!

The third (and fifth-ish) Hokage hurried back out of the room as fast as his wizened old legs could take him – and, given that he has wizened, old _shinobi_ legs, his pace was actually quite a bit faster than one would originally think. In less than a minute he was back in his office, shutting the door loudly behind him and hobbling over to his desk. He began opening random drawers, and slamming them shut when they didn't contain what he wanted. "Come on…" he muttered impatiently as he opened one at the very bottom. He was just about to slam it shut when he stopped. He looked back into the open drawer and smiled wearily. He dipped a hand in and withdrew a large, bulky scroll. He set it atop his desk – after clearing it of any extra paper, brushes, ink pots, and questionable reading material – and unrolled it.

The scroll he had taken out was one linked directly to the seals that guarded the Shadow Scroll Room. Those seals had been a generous addition to the security by one Namikaze Minato, the Yellow Flash of Konoha, and the Yondaime Hokage. They had been keyed to the chakra signatures of the Hokages, anyone with Kage-ranked clearance, and anyone else the present Hokage trusted enough to have them added to the matrix – usually being a relative, or loved one.

If someone who hadn't been keyed into the matrix attempted to enter the room, the seals immediately depleted a hefty majority of that someone's chakra supply, rendering them near-to-definitely unconscious and pretty much helpless. And, given that the entire length of the hallway was designed to sap chakra as well, just at a slower rate, the entire process would take about two seconds, max. It had only happened three times since Sarutobi had been in office (both times), and he had come to the scene in all instances to find the perpetrator laying in the middle of the doorway; one had been dead, one was unconscious and hardly breathing, and the last and most previous one had been swearing up a storm, trying to drag himself into the room but failing quite spectacularly because he was too weak to even move his arms.

Since Naruto managed to make his way into the room, he had to have passed through that doorway. Now, it stood to reason that he of all people could have activated the seals and had his chakra depleted very quickly, and managed to remain standing. He was probably one of the only people in the world to be able to, really – not only were his natural chakra reserves massive, but he also had the Kyuubi's demonic chakra, which put his supplies on an entirely new level.

Sarutobi's eyes flicked around the scroll, reading off the names, the dates, and the times of who entered and exited the Shadow Scroll Room: him, him, him, him, him again, him, him, Danzo, him, him, Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu, Danzo again, him, him, him, him, him…_Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina_, him, him.

"Ah." Of course! Dammit, of_ course_. A child's chakra signature is, in essence, an amalgam of their parents', just like the DNA that they inherit, or the blood type they have. And if that child is young enough – before they have finished maturing, as well as their chakra signature into one of their own – then their chakra would very closely mirror their parents', close enough to fool Minato's seals!

Seals, as a general rule, are very difficult to work with. It is even tougher a job to make them meet the most specific of standards, like, say, recognizing precise chakra signatures of only a handful of people and being able to distinguish even the slightest of differences from another signature so closely mimicking one (or two) from that handful.

Sarutobi hummed to himself as he closed the scroll and put it back into its correct drawer. Now he'd have to see about adding a few more security measures to the room, if Naruto had what amounted to a "Pass Go, Collect $200" card.

* * *

Irons, as Naruto had found out, rather enjoyed filling his stories with obscure and unnecessary references to random crap that he knew nothing about; he had briefly mentioned something about 'double arts', was trying to make a point again and again involving 'the thing', and really just wouldn't shut up with what sounded like various quotes, including a line about a 'vespa woman' who wielded a guitar and hit people with 'perverted thoughts'.

But subtly slipped in between all the references was what seemed like an actual story, involving Hawkeye kicking puppies and eating what was supposed to be a dish made out of cat. Apparently that made him a terrible, horrible person – although, personally, Naruto would never eat cat, just because cats were too awesome, and too cool, and way too loveable to end up as dinner.

Almost immediately after Irons finished his tale, the snarky punk called Hawkeye spoke up, insulting Irons, Sparky, and Naruto himself, and stated once again that he didn't trust Naruto one bit, as the Shinobi's Scroll had been previously kept within the Shadow Scroll Room.

The others were silent after that, and Naruto couldn't exactly ignore such an obvious accusation. So he sighed, set aside the empty cup of noodles, and began explaining.

He told them about his life. He told them that his earliest memories had been of an orphanage, and how he had always been accused of lying from the owners and, later, from the other orphans. He told them how he had left early on, and badgered the Old Man – the Hokage – into letting him have a place of his own. He told them about him growing up, about his entering the Academy. He told them about the time he tried to find out about his parents, and how he had stayed mad at the Old Man for a week afterward. He told them about his respite that came in the form of a small, family-run ramen stand. He told them about his crush on Sakura-chan, and about his rivalry with Sasuke, the Bastard. He told them about Iruka-sensei, and he told them about Mizuki. He explained how bad he had been in school, and how he had failed again and again. Eventually the events of the previous day (as it had, according to the little digital clock he had on his counter, passed midnight over an hour ago) came into the conversation. He told them how he was desperate, duped, and how he found them in the room. And he said that he found them to be really interesting, and hadn't, and still didn't, want to give them back to the Old Man, like he had with the Forbidden Scroll.

And he told them about the Kyuubi.

Their responses had been widely positive…or, at the very least, not negative. Spitfire had said something close to a joking and apologetic, 'well, sucks to be you, dun'nnit?'. Sparky had been absolutely fascinated, having apparently heard of the Bijuu in his lifetime. He had asked all sorts of questions, and had to be disappointed again and again when Naruto just couldn't answer those questions. Irons showed his child-like enthusiasm and had immediately begun rambling on about the myths and legends of the Tailed Beasts, like a little kid who wanted to proudly show that he knew that bedtime story, and his mommy should let _him_ read it tonight! Hawkeye had imitated Spitfire's reply, only his was far more serious about the comment. Something like, 'Kami hates your guts. I agree with her.'

As their conversations turned away from serious, heartfelt revelations, and into curiosity towards the entities, their existence, and the Shinobi's Scroll, Naruto found out that his smile wouldn't go down. He was grinning the rest of the night.

* * *

For those reading this for the first time, I would like to say that I appreciate your adding to my traffic count, and would appreciate it even more if you helped bump up my review count as well.

For y'all who're re-reading, you may notice that I tweaked a few things yet again. Last time, I promise. I've gone through the story and changed a few things, added and removed a few scenes and edited out some unnecessary material and accidental plothole-brain-hiccups; the main change you'll see is that Team 13 no longer exists. Sad but true.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this story as it continues to (slowly) progress, and I _**really**_ hope you'll get a good laugh from it. If you tell me that something in my story made you laugh, I guarentee you'll have made my day.

Good day to you all.


	2. Chapter 2

The Marauders _ a Naruto fanfiction by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

Chapter Two

* * *

"Okay, so I think I'm starting to get what the heck this scroll is and what the heck you guys are. But what the hell is up with the huge black part?"

_Sparky would like to point out the storage seals that decorate the handle of the scroll._

"Eh? What seals?" Naruto followed the long tail of paper that trailed out of the Shinobi's Scroll until he got to the end. He picked up the wooden piece that decorated the last part of paper. "This thing…?" he muttered doubtfully. He squinted as he held it up in front of his eyes. "It just looks like a dark stick of wood!" He growled in annoyance. "It'd be so much easier if it was the afternoon, when I can have some light!" Damn landlord cut off the lights to the apartment complex during nighttime to save money. Or maybe just to him. Either way, the guy was a crotchety old bastard.

Naruto went back to the where 'the Pranksters' – as he'd come to start calling them; it was a lot better than 'the Three Stooges, plus a Bastard', after all – talked with him. They had already written their thoughts.

_Hawkeye finds himself appalled at the apparent lack of teaching in the Academy these days. Simple katon and raiton jutsu were essentials when he was in school, taught for basic lighting techniques in the dark._

_Spitfire would like to punch Sparky in the face for deflecting the kid's question, but she can't._

_Hawkeye would like to offer his condolences to Spitfire…san._

_Irons thinks that the owner should try pushing a load of chakra into the stick and see what happens._

"You think so?" Naruto asked out loud, eyeing the small length of wood. Their last replies were quickly swept away by a quick scrawl.

_Sparky would rather the new owner didn't listen to Irons-san when asking for advice. Irons-san is not exactly the most knowledgeable about seals._

_Irons takes offense to that comment, and claims that he's not _that_ bad._

_Spitfire would like to remind Irons of the twenty-two incidents that occurred within the first three days of his studying sealing._

_Hawkeye would like to remind Spitfire-san that it was actually twenty-eight, but some of those incidents could not be traced back to Irons at that point in time._

_Irons takes offense to that comment as well, sends a scathing insult at Hawkeye-teme, and goes off to sulk._

"So what do I do, then? And what's up with the seals on the wood, anyhow? Why do I need to know this stuff, and why should I care?"

_Spitfire is going to step out of the line of fire for this one._

_Hawkeye agrees with Spitfire's wise judgment and slowly backs away from Sparky no Baka._

_Sparky takes the new owner's comment as a direct insult to himself, having been someone who had instructed whiny little ninja before. Sparky would also like to point out that the storage seals are on the handle so the end of the scroll that has the black ink covering the paper can seal that useless paper and keep him from making a mess, such as he has made, every time he wishes to utilize this scroll. Sparky thinks that the new owner would very much like not having to dig through tens of meters of stained paper in order to find the few words we say. Sparky would hope that the new owner would see the uses of seals on _anything_, and should care because of how amazing the art of fuuinjutsu really is. As for the black expanse – those are logs of our conversations with our previous owners, stained accordingly so that the new owner cannot read over private conversations._

Naruto raised an eyebrow.

_Spitfire thinks Sparky should settle down a little before he scares the kid._

"Hey!"

_Spitfire would like to apologize for thinking that the kid is a scared little girl._

"_Hey!_"

_Spitfire realizes that the kid does not like hearing the truth, and would like to remind him that the truth hurts and he needs to stop whining._

Something beeped in the background, drawing Naruto out of his conversation. He blinked rapidly and looked around. The beeping grew louder. "What the heck is that?" What did he have that made that noise? And why was it making it right now?

He slowly trekked away from his kitchen table, being careful not to step on too much of the paper littering the floor, and went into his room where the ringing seemed to be coming from.

Oh. His alarm clock.

…his alarm clock? Why the hell was his alarm clock going off?

He went over to turn it off and got sight of the time: 6:45 am.

He blinked. 6:45? But…it was still night…wasn't it?

Naruto ran out his room and over to the sliding door that led to his little balcony. He yanked open the grimy fabric curtain that separated the glass door from the rest of his place and yelled out when the light of a rising sun slammed into his suddenly very-tired eyes. "Dammit!" he swore.

He was going to be late! The Academy graduates were supposed to meet up at their classroom at 7:00! Dammit, he was going to be late on his first day as being a ninja, as being an official shinobi of Konoha!

"Shit!" he cursed again, whirling around and dashing back into his room. Thumps and crashes emanated from behind the closed door for a few minutes before Naruto burst out in his trademark-orange jacket and pants. His hitai-ate, worn like a necklace, tapped against his collarbone as he ran over to the table, saying "okay, how do I seal the paper?" as he went. Because he'd be damned if he wasn't going to take this new Awesome with him wherever he went.

When he reached the scroll, a reply was waiting for him.

_Hawkeye knows that Sparky no Baka will be stewing for a while, so he will answer for the reader: since the scroll has been attuned to the reader's chakra, it will be easier to seal than most other things. All the reader has to do is put one hand on each end of the grip and slowly – SLOWLY – channel his chakra into it. Let it flow into the wood, don't force it. If he does it correctly, the owner should feel a light pulling on the chakra in his hands as the storage seals react and take a little extra to finish the action. When he is finished sealing the amount of paper he wishes to seal, he simply needs to stop channeling chakra, or take both hands off of the handle._

"Okay!" Naruto grabbed the handle, willing himself to calm down, and let his chakra flow. The ocean of chakra in his torso settled down to an waterfall as it passed to his arms, falling to a river as it swirled over his elbows, where it split into smaller streams, trickling down each of his fingers and pooling delicately into the wood.

He watched as small characters began lighting up upon the surface, glowing a faint blue. Were those the seals? They grew brighter as more chakra was fed into them, until they flashed once.

Naruto felt his eyebrows rise as he watched the black paper get fed into the wooden grip, meter by meter vanishing as the seals did their thing. "Woah."

He tore his fingers away from the handle right before the newly-appeared sentence was sucked in.

_Sparky would like to congratulate the new owner on his first success at sealing, and grudgingly approves of Hawkeye-san's brief explanation._

Naruto grinned.

_Irons thinks that now would be an opportune time to remind the owner that he was hurrying to do something._

"Shit!" Naruto swore again, his grin changing to a grimace. "I got to be at the Academy in ten minutes!" Growling to himself in increasing frustration, he snapped the Shinobi's Scroll shut, put it under his arm and ran over to his door. He jammed his sandals onto his feet and, with one last hurried glance around his apartment to make sure he didn't forget anything, slammed the door behind him as he left.

* * *

Nara Shikamaru was sitting in the back row of classroom 7C. He was unusually awake for this time of day – of course, him being awake at all was unusual for _any _time of day – as he watched his former classmates filter into the room. His best friend Akimichi Chouji, on his left, kept shooting him confused glances; Shika being conscious while inside the school building was not an event that happened every day. It was not unnatural for him to have a sum-total of twenty-two days spent asleep in a standard month.

Shikamaru shrugged and ignored the looks. Instead, he let his eyes fall to the person sitting on his right: one Aburame Shino. This struck him as odd. It was one thing for the quiet boy to sit with anyone in the class. It was another thing completely for the quiet boy to sit with _him_. And to stay silent, waiting patiently for someone to speak, before he himself said anything; Shino was waiting for Shikamaru to say something first in order for him to be able to gain control of the conversation. It wouldn't do to give the fellow shinobi the upper hand.

So Shikamaru stayed silent.

It wasn't until five minutes later that Shino voiced his thoughts, and made it abundantly clear why he chose to sit next to the Nara today.

"It came to my attention this morning that Uzumaki Naruto managed to graduate, despite his poor performance during yesterday's exam."

Shikamaru groaned, and put his head into his arms. He did not need to deal with this. Screw controlling the conversation; he didn't care. He just didn't want to gossip about this like a few pre-pubescent girls.

He lifted his head a little and glared at Haruno Sakura and Yamanaka Ino; they were already sniping at each other like a pair of dogs.

"Really?" Chouji asked, surprised. Shino twitched his head almost imperceptibly forward – the barest movement necessary acting as a nod. "Cool." He paused for a moment, before furrowing his brow in thought. "Wait, how did he manage to pull that off?" The heavy-set boy – man, now, according to Konohagakure law – automatically turned to Shikamaru, questions in his eyes once again.

Shikamaru sighed. He glared at the silent Aburame, just for good measure, before turning back to Chouji and saying tiredly, "Pops said something about Naruto stopping some guy from stealing some super-secret scroll or something." His lips pulled further down. "He said more than that, but trying to listen to the whole story was far too troublesome."

Shino made a contemplative noise from behind his color. "Is that so," he observed.

The unsung genius of the three frowned at the tone used; there was a knowing lilt to the answer given. As if Shino knew exactly what the whole story was.

Of course, that could very well be the case. Shikamaru knew enough about Shino to realize that the boy was unnaturally observant; he spent his days watching his classmates, memorizing their habits, their attitudes, absorbing their personalities, and keeping careful watch over the more promising ones, the more dangerous and unexpected ones. It was so obvious that it was a wonder no one else noticed; he had, after all, seen the myriad of insects that flew incessantly around the classroom, landing in corners, on desks, and just sitting for hours at a time before flying back to the Aburame's hand, hidden underneath his desk.

It would stand to reason that Shino was just as analytical, as observant and brilliant outside the classroom as he was inside. And if that was indeed the case, the boy was bound to hear a few things more – and retain them, at that – than Shikamaru did.

"Yeah," was all the Nara said in reply.

Chouji just looked between the two in confusion.

Shikamaru let his gaze drift over to the clock on the wall. It was 6:51. The graduates were all supposed to be here by 7:00.

"Naruto's gonna be late," he said.

"Of course," Shino replied. "It is a logical probability to assume that Uzumaki stayed up late last night due to his exuberance at succeeding to become a shinobi, and then succumbed to exhaustion, resulting in his oversleeping and waking up late."

"Sure, that's what I meant."

Shino turned his head towards the lazy brunette. "A detailed and concise way of speaking should not be thought of as a hindrance. Such things are essential for forming an acceptable mission report, something which will become vital now that we are shinobi."

"True," replied Shikamaru, "but do you really think you'll have time to talk all troublesome like that in the middle of a battle, or while you are ordered to report to your commander in a squad? No. They'll want short and simple, something to give the information needed in a quick manner and that's it."

"And in those instances, I will shorten my explanations to an appropriate length."

"You could have just said, 'I'd do that in those situations'," Chouji pointed out, attempting to join the conversation a little. "You don't always have to use the longest words possible to get a point across."

Shino was quiet for a moment. He took a breath, which ruffled his collar a little, and said, "I was instructed since my earlier memories that speaking in such a manner set me apart from the uncouth and uncivilized members of my generation."

Inuzuka Kiba, ever the prim and proper epitome of civility, chose that moment to bellow "No, fuck you!" at another graduate, leaping out of the seat and barreling into the other boy, tackling him to the ground with another curse and a bark of laughter.

Shikamaru and Chouji looked at each other.

"You have a point there," they said together, looking back at the Aburame. Shino simply nodded.

"So…" Chouji said after another few minutes of silence. "How late do you think he'll be this time? I mean, he's usually – what – ten, fifteen minutes late? Barring the occasion when he just plain ditches until Iruka-sensei catches him." He nodded to himself.

"His average delay for his entire schooling at the Academy is approximately one hour and twenty-one minutes," Shino replied neutrally. "If any delay of over an hour is not included in the equation, his average time of delay lowers drastically to approximately eleven minutes."

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. "You take note of how much time it takes him to get to class?"

"Not just Uzumaki. I take note of everyone's behavioral patterns – their routine, their habits, their responses to differentiating stimuli. A competent shinobi should attempt to obtain as much information on both allies and adversaries as possible." Shino visibly raised a brow and looked at Shikamaru. "To use an example, you, Nara, use only seven percent of your time in class to actually sleep. I would approximate the amount you use for daydreaming at closer to twenty-five percent. Another sixty percent you use to act like you are unconscious, but are actually listening intently to the lecture being given."

"And the remaining eight percent?" Chouji prodded. Shikamaru just groaned, placing his hands over his head where it rested on the desk.

"The excess eight percent varies by a small amount each day. Usually, though, it is used talking with you."

Chouji grinned at his friend. Shikamaru didn't bother looking up, instead choosing to turn the subject of discussion back a minute. "I think he'll be more than five minutes late this time, less than eight." Chouji laughed.

"Putting money on that?" he teased, nudging his friend in the side.

"Sure, why not," Shikamaru gave in, his voice muffled. One of his hands withdrew from its perch and dipped into a pocket. He withdrew a small handful of bills and coins and set it down next to his head. "There. Whatever that is."

Chouji counted it up and nodded to himself. That could buy him six large bags of barbeque-flavored potato chips, with a little left over. That was acceptable. He quickly shoved a hand into his own pocket and drew out his own money, counting it out and setting aside the bet.

Shino had somehow managed to put his money on the table without moving a muscle.

"I've got…eight to eleven minutes this time," Chouji said, nodding to himself.

Shino was silent for a while before saying, "Between three minutes, twenty-eight seconds and three minutes, forty-two seconds." He could practically feel the raised eyebrows that his answer gained him.

They fell silent, conversation finished, just as Umino Iruka entered the classroom at 7:00 (and sixteen seconds, Shino noted) and walked to the center of the classroom.

* * *

Umino Iruka – known best as "Sensei" or "Fish" by his students and colleagues, respectively (the latter he can't stand, because no matter how many times he tells them that a dolphin is _not_ a fish, they keep at it as if they were right – grown men should be more intelligent!) – smiled nostalgically as he took in the faces of his former students, each one now framed with the gleaming silver of a brand-new hitai-ate.

He couldn't be more proud of them.

It felt like just a little while ago that he was earning his own hitai-ate, grinning happily up at his sensei before running home to show his parents and his sister, instead of meeting them at the Academy doors like tradition stated.

He reached up and touched his hitai-ate; his _new_ hitai-ate. He wondered if anyone would notice the gleaming, flawless surface that had replaced the scratched, dented, dirty-grey metal of old, or if they would realize that the cloth keeping it in place was now dark green instead of the navy blue that he originally had.

His eyes flickered over to the Nara and Aburame of the class. They'd notice, for sure, being two of the brightest in the class – even if they deliberately tried not to. Hyuuga Hinata, Yoro Yumi, and Sakiten Takato were fairly keen on the details; they got hold of the little things, like a papercut on his finger, or a new stapler on his desk. Yamanaka Ino would most likely notice, if for no other reason than that it was now more aesthetically pleasing; she generally paid a lot of attention to how people looked. Time would tell if that was because she was a teenage female, or if she was actually gaining useful information from doing so.

He let his hand drop and frowned mentally as his eyes flitted over the class. He shook his head and sighed.

Naruto was late.

Iruka had hoped that the responsibility of being a ninja would have been beaten into the boy's head last night, after the fight, the lecture from the Sandaime, and the lecture from himself when he bought him a few bowls of ramen for a late dinner. Apparently not. Although…it was possible that Naruto just stayed up late, fell asleep sometime this morning, and woke up late. Naruto _was_ ecstatic when he bade him goodnight; Iruka wouldn't put it past him to have been unable to sleep from the excitement.

Shrugging to himself – nothing he could do until the boy got here, after all – Iruka turned his attention back to his former students. "Congratulations," was all he said. There wasn't anything that needed saying, no ideas to build on, no words of wisdom that he felt was needed. He wasn't here to weigh them down with the possibility of death, murder, and blood in their future. That wasn't his job anymore. The only thing he was useful for to the men and women looking back at him was to give them a smile, letting them know that he'll always be here if they should ever need him, and let them go.

The room brightened as the faces in front of him lifted with smiles – some small and hesitant, some big and bold, some hidden behind grimaces, and some flashing behind their eyes – and Iruka couldn't help but grin right back.

He was going to miss this class.

Still smiling, the teacher walked over to his desk and picked up a stack of papers. He held them up and all attention focused upon them. "These are the team assignments. Every one of you has been put in groups of three, with one jounin-sensei taking charge of each team. Some of you have been specifically asked for by these jounin, so act responsibly around them; I don't want to hear any reports of any of you badmouthing your leader, is that clear?" He punctuated his statement with a glare.

The general consensus was a resounding 'yes', although there were some 'fat chance'-s and hard-to-understand grunts.

Oh well. Take what you can get; win some, lose some.

"Good. Now-"

"Where's Mizuki-sensei?" Muriki Ryoko asked suddenly, belatedly thrusting her hand into the air, her black eyes shimmering.

Iruka froze.

Shit. What should he – what _could_ he tell them? That their assistant teacher was actually a psychopathic megalomaniac? That his best friend had tried to kill him?

"Mizuki…" he said slowly, trying to sound calm, "didn't have to come today…since we aren't holding an official class, the assistant teacher has no need to be here."

"Oh, okay," Ryoko said, sounding disappointed. Iruka almost laughed before he was struck by sadness; she had had a crush on his silver-haired assistant, and if she found out that he was actually completely out of his mind…

He shook his head, trying to get back to more positive thoughts. He fingered the papers in his hand and held them up, taking a deep breath and continuing from his previous tangent. "This year we have…four-"

The door slammed open and a shout of "Iruka-sensei!" interrupted him before he could get out the next word. All eyes swiveled to a panting, slightly-sweaty, very ruffled, and rather tired-looking Uzumaki Naruto, who was standing in the doorway with a grin on his face, a small scroll tucked under his arm, and a hitai-ate proudly sitting against his black undershirt.

Iruka couldn't help but grin as he said, "You're late, Naruto. Luckily for you, though, you didn't miss the team announcements. Please take a seat."

"Yes, Iruka-sensei," Naruto said hurriedly, shutting the door behind him and leaping into a seat near the front. He set the scroll on the desk in front of him and gave it a pat before turning his full attention to one of his favorite people in Konoha.

Iruka cleared his throat and looked around the class, noting the confusion on most of their faces. For some reason, Nara Shikamaru and Akimichi Chouji were passing a handful of bills and coins to Aburame Shino. None of them seemed at all surprised to have seen Naruto burst into the room like a whirlwind – like a maelstrom, Iruka thought with a chuckle.

"As I was saying before we were…interrupted," Iruka said, causing Naruto to grin at him from the front row, "this year, we have four new teams being formed: teams seven, eight, ten, and sixteen." He lifted the sheets of paper up in front of him and almost groaned. Who the hell made these teams? Whoever it was, he was going to track them down and gut them like a fish.

"Team Seven," he said, clearing his throat again, "consists of Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura-" He was cut off as the pink-haired girl practically leapt from her seat, making a noise that sounded like a cross between a squeal and a shout, and jabbed her finger at her blonde-haired rival.

"Ha! Take that, Ino-pig!" she crowed. Ino looked shocked, and Iruka knew it wouldn't last; she'd start yelling before the minute of disappointment was over. So he plowed valiantly, but reluctantly, on.

"-Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, and-"

"Pick me, pick me, pick me!"

"-yes, and you, Naruto."

Naruto made a little happy noise in the back of his throat and raised one fist into the air before bringing it down sharply, one of the many signs of 'yessssssss!', with a giant grin on his face.

Iruka sighed, mentally shaking his head. This entire team had disaster written all over it. Seriously… "You're jounin-sensei is Hatake Kakashi." …the only one as bad as Kakashi was Asuma, but, hey – at least Asuma had _passed_ a team before.

Team Eight was much better; it even had a purpose! Thank goodness. It had been a while since Konoha had such a well-put-together tracking/spying team. "Team Eight consists of Hyuuga Hinata, Inuzuka Kiba, and Aburame Shino. You're jounin-sensei is Yuuhi Kurenai." Ah, the new-promote. She had gotten her rank less than three months ago. Powerful with genjutsu, he'd heard. And Hinata needed a positive female-figure in her life.

"Team Ten consists of Nara Shikamaru, Akimichi Chouji, and Yamanaka Ino. Your jounin-sensei is Sarutobi Asuma." Wow. He so did not envy that team – not the genin, and not the jounin, either.

He pointedly ignored the martyred groan from Shikamaru and the disbelieving shriek from Ino. Reacting would only provoke their actions.

Iruka frowned as he tried to figure out if Team Ten or Team Seven was the worst team he'd ever seen, then, with a shrug, decided that he could figure that out later. When he had a few scrap pieces of paper, a new pen, and a few hours to spare.

"Team Sixteen consists of Yoro Yumi, Sakiten Takato, and Muriki Ryoko. Your jounin-sensei is Ryuji Suimin." Younger brother of Ryuji Idate. Good guy. Iruka couldn't say he knew a lot about Suimin-san, beside the fact that he had already had three teams – his first had been prematurely disbanded for disorderly conduct, the second group had been separated after one member was killed and another crippled, and the last team all managed to advance to chuunin and went off on their own. But the team itself seemed pretty well-put-together, if a little unorthodox: two girls and one boy was unusual, let alone two girls and one boy two years younger than them.

He turned and placed the papers back onto his desk before addressing the class in its entirety. "That concludes the team announcements for the newest graduates of the Shinobi Academy." He gave them a soft smile. "The jounin-sensei will start coming in in a few minutes. They will call a team number, and the three from that team will follow them to wherever they wish to go. And from then on, you are their responsibility. You will listen to them, respect them, learn from them. They will be your teacher, your mentor, and your confident. You are not my students any longer."

Iruka straightened, and then bent his body at the waist, shifting into a respectful bow, his face humbly facing the floor. He was met with shocked silence as he came back up.

"Do your best," he said, flashing one final grin at the newest shinobi of Konoha. No one spoke a word as he turned and walked resolutely out the door. He closed it quietly behind him.

Silence.

* * *

Naruto's face hurt.

He was pretty damned sure that he'd smiled more in the last twelve hours then he had in his entire life. And that was saying something.

Iruka-sensei was awesome.

Naruto had been expecting some mushy, emotional goodbye from the Academy's favorite sensei – Iruka-sensei got very attached to his students, this he already knew – but what had happened was not what he had been expecting at all. He had…bowed to them. As if they deserved his respect, and not the other way around. As if they were better than him.

Psh. He could be so dumb sometimes – no one was better than Iruka-sensei.

But still, that single act only served to paste a stupid grin on his face all over again, as big as the one he had on last night when Iruka-sensei had handed over his own hitai-ate as proof of Naruto's graduation.

Idly, Naruto wondered if anyone had noticed that he had their teacher's headband, and that their teacher had gotten a new one. He knew there had to be a few.

He grinned.

Iruka-sensei was so awesome.

For having the patience to teach him, for having the patience to put up with all his pranks and tricks and traps, for caring enough to check up on him every so often, and for protecting him from Mizuki and letting him graduate and taking him out to ramen, and for understanding – for knowing how hard being an orphan was, how the attention he needed was the one thing that he so rarely got – everything he had gone through, and for just being there when he needed help reading or writing, or just to talk…Iruka-sensei was, hands-down, the greatest, coolest, most caring, helpful, _awesome_ person ever to have been born.

He bounced in his seat in excitement.

And now he was going to get a new sensei!

Naruto frowned a little – he knew that this Kakashi guy wasn't trying to replace Iruka-sensei, but it sure felt like he was. He just hoped he could always go back and be able to be with Iruka-sensei like he usually was after he had a new sensei. He didn't want their relationship – teacher and student, friend and friend, father-figure and son, whatever they were, whatever bond they had – to change. He wanted to always be able to count on the chuunin to be there when he needed him.

Oh! And he had Sakura-chan on his team!

And the Bastard.

But he had Sakura-chan on his team!

He did a little dance in his head as he looked over at the object of his affections. She and Ino were, as per usual, fawning of Sasuke.

Hmm…Ino…ah, that was it! He wanted to ask her about mind jutsu. His gaze swiveled over to the Shinobi's Scroll, still sitting innocently on the desk in front of him. He frowned thoughtfully.

"I wonder what you guys have to say about all this…" he muttered to himself. He absentmindedly fingered the edge of the scroll as he looked back at Ino.

Talk to the Pranksters first, or talk to Ino first…?

Decisions, decisions. After all, he didn't know when her jounin-sensei would show up. It would be smarter to ask her now. But, then, he _really_ wanted to check out the scroll and talk with Sparky, Spitfire, Hawkeye, and Irons.

Well, not really Hawkeye.

He shook his head around as a small buzzing sound reached his ears. He must be really thinking hard, if the quiet chattering of the people around him sounded more like a quiet hum than voices. He shrugged, and turned back to his thoughts.

Well, he didn't _have_ to talk to Ino right now. He could always find her later, maybe go to her house. Then he would be able to ask her father, too; he was undoubtedly more knowledgeable than she about a person's mind.

Naruto nodded to himself and looked around. No one was sitting next to him, no one behind him. Good.

He grabbed the handle and pulled. There was a slight crinkle of paper as a section of the scroll came into view. Naruto raised an eyebrow when he saw how much was already written.

It appeared they could still speak when the scroll was rolled up. Interesting. He began reading from the top, where Irons' last entry - _Irons thinks that now would be an opportune time to remind the owner that he was hurrying to do something_ – had not faded.

Below that lay the start of a deluge of sentences, starting with: _Hawkeye thinks that the reader should be more careful when he jumps across rooftops._ That must have been written when he landed on a weak spot of a roof and almost fell through. He smiled.

_Spitfire would like to remind Hawkeye that the kid will still end up feeding him spiders and toilet water, so it would be best if he did not insult the kid further, in case the kid decides to add to the punishment._

Damn right!

_Irons expresses his joy at being at the Academy once again._

_Hawkeye shakes his head at the abrupt and conspicuous way the reader entered the room. Generally, shouting and slamming the door are not good ways to keep from being noticed._

It would be if everyone did that.

_Sparky would like to point out that Hawkeye-san is just being a stick in the mud – as usual – and he should not be admonishing anyone about attention-seeking behavior._

_Irons think that that applies to all of them, really._

_Sparky would have to agree with Irons-san's point._

_Hawkeye expresses his disdain at the Hatake having a genin team, especially one that includes the reader._

Hawkeye knew of his jounin-sensei?

_Sparky would like to express his surprise that Kakashi-kun became a jounin-sensei, as he wouldn't have considered him any good with teaching._

And so did Sparky? And Sparky sounded a lot closer to him – calling him Kakashi-kun implied that he knew him well. Was Sparky a relative, maybe? Perhaps a close friend, a brother? A Teammate?

_Spitfire would like to say that she thinks that the chuunin instructor sounds like a very nice person._

Naruto grinned. If only she knew.

_Oh_, if only they knew.

_Hawkeye thinks that the chuunin instructor sounds like too much of a softy to be a real ninja._

Naruto growled at that, glaring at the paper. Hawkeye really pissed him off sometimes. Asshole. If the guy was still alive somewhere, he'd have to find him and beat the shit out of him.

Speaking of, he didn't know what had happened to the four of them. Were they all dead? Had one of them died, two, three? Were they still ninja? Could he find them? He supposed the names that they used on the Shinobi's Scroll could be their real-life nicknames. But how did one track someone down by just using nicknames? "Hey, Iruka-sensei, do you know someone nicknamed 'Irons' No? How about 'Sparky'? Did you ever teach someone named that?" Yeah, right. That would work. No, it was more likely that these names were only used between the four of them, a little friends-only correspondence.

_Spitfire would like to point out that the kid and the chuunin instructor seem to have a kinship with each other, based on the few words they exchanged, and that it would be unwise for Hawkeye to continue his insults._

"Damn right," Naruto grunted.

_Sparky thinks that Spitfire is awfully protective of this chuunin instructor, and would like to say that he was unaware that a chakra-imbued memory bound to a piece of paper could have a crush on someone._

Naruto felt his lips quirk up, and he let his eyes slide down to the next line – he had a feeling it was going to be Spitfire wishing she could beat Sparky over the head with a particularly heavy object.

_Spitfire would smack Sparky if she could._

Eh, close enough.

_Irons thinks that, to answer the owner's question of what they all think, he should probably read what they have been saying up until now._

_Sparky would like to say hello, and it's very nice to see the new owner again, and it really does get quite stuffy when rolled up inside our scroll after a while._

That was the last entry. Naruto lifted his eyes from the scroll and looked around. Most of the class seemed to be in their own little worlds, talking quietly with each other, or staring expectantly at the door. He noticed two pairs of eyes on him, though: Uchiha Sasuke – with disdain, obviously; one of his eyebrows was raised slightly, though, as if he was idly wondering what Naruto was reading – and Aburame Shino – well, at least, he _thought_ the boy was looking at him; his head was certainly turned towards him. He could just be looking at the door, like some of the others. He had a hand lifted towards his face, and Naruto could easily make out several small dots resting on top of it; he was talking to his bugs again, no doubt.

Sheesh, that guy was creepy.

Naruto shook his head and turned back to the scroll, just as a voice practically yelled in his ear, "Hey, what's that?" He yelped and fell out of his chair. He glared up at one Inuzuka Kiba, who was standing over him and grinning wolfishly. "I mean," he continued, as if he hadn't just made Naruto fall on his ass, "I haven't seen you read in, like, _ever_." His brown eyes shifted over to the paper, and Naruto scrambled to his feet, ready to force the boy away. "What's – aw, dude. That's so lame."

Naruto blinked. "Huh?"

"What the heck're you carrying around a _completely_ censored scroll for, Naruto? You'd think you were actually doing something, with the way you were looking at it earlier," Kiba grumbled, shaking his head and walking away.

"…huh?" Naruto looked back at the scroll.

_Sparky would like to remind the new owner that the Shinobi's Scroll is attuned to his chakra only, and thus, no one else can read his conversations with us._

"Oh." He shrugged. That made sense. "Okay then."

* * *

Slowly, the room began to empty as each jounin-sensei came in, called for their team, and left. First was Team Eight, then Team Sixteen three minutes later. Team Ten came about forty-five minutes after that, and Team Seven still had not been called. It had been over two hours since Iruka-sensei left the classroom.

Naruto was getting restless.

And when Naruto got restless, he got mischievous. And a mischievous Naruto was a dangerous Naruto.

He looked at the scroll and whined, "he's still not here yet, guys."

_Sparky is surprised at Kakashi-kun's tardiness, and is somewhat wary as to what could have caused it._

_Hawkeye thinks the Hatake was a stuck-up prick, but for some reason, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Hawkeye finds this interesting._

_Spitfire thinks we should prank him._

Naruto grinned. If this girl were alive, he was going to find her and give her the biggest, sloppiest kiss he could muster. She had been saying the same variation of that sentence for the past hour. '_Spitfire thinks Kakashi-kun deserves a kick to the jewels for making the kid wait so long.' 'Spitfire wishes she could get out of this paper, find Kakashi-kun, and beat his face in for making us wait.' 'Spitfire suggests that the kid should prank him.' 'Spitfire would like to point out that Hawkeye is an idiot, and that Kakashi-kun deserves whatever's coming to him.' 'Spitfire orders the kid to prank. Him. Now.'_ And so on. It was funnier every time she brought it up.

"Sounds good to me. Got any suggestions?" he said quietly, careful not to speak too loud – didn't want Sasuke and Sakura-chan think he was talking to himself, or an inanimate object; they might think he was crazy! And that wasn't a good assumption to start any relationship on, romantic or friendship-wise. It was even worse than thinking he was incompetent.

He could practically see a faceless woman grinning like a shark as the next words appeared.

_Spitfire would like to suggest that we use one of her pranks; she says that it was one she used on Kakashi-kun frequently when he was a midget._

"Do tell," Naruto prodded eagerly.

As the plan slowly unfolded, the newest Prankster couldn't help but grin widely, a feral tinge to his expression as he patiently read each simple material needed, and how everything was to be set up. And especially the final result, if all went well.

He didn't even notice the weird looks that he was getting from his teammates.

This was gonna be good.

* * *

Hatake Kakashi hummed to himself from behind his mask, slowly making his way down the road. He had his trademark book in hand, opened to page one hundred-eighty-seven – the start of chapter eleven, and quite possibly his favorite chapter in the entire Icha Icha series.

At this particular moment, however, the self-proclaimed 'porn with a plot' was not the thing on the forefront of his mind. Kakashi was, instead, far too busy wondering what he should eat for his mid-morning meal.

He chuckled to himself – though, to be honest, it came out more like a giggle than anything else – as his mind lingered for a moment on some of the more perverted thoughts of 'eating'.

He flipped the page.

He supposed he could stop by the market and pick up some fruit. No, wait, he only did that before a mission. 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away', and all that. He always ate an apple the day he left for a mission in the vain hope that it would ward him away from having to spend time in the hospital when he got back to Konoha – it was one of Obito's little habits. He'd picked up on a lot of them over the years.

He scratched at the scar across the left half of his face and made another humming noise.

He could always stop by Moritake's. They had fairly good food. Oh, wait, but he was allergic to the rich, upper-class morons that frequented that particular establishment. Darn.

How about that little restaurant by the library? There was never anyone there, and their sushi was fantastic. Even if he never really took the time to enjoy it. But…the library was, like, a ten minute walk from here.

_Way_ too long.

He flipped the page and gave another chuckle/giggle. One had to keep up appearances, after all. He had a reputation to maintain.

Kakashi had just rounded a corner when a particularly pleasing smell hit him. He nodded to himself and closed his book, looking around for whatever was creating that scent.

Ah.

Ichiraku's.

He thought it over for a moment – did he really want to eat there? – before shrugging and brushing his doubts aside. It was plenty easier to not care.

So Kakashi ducked slightly as he walked past the paper curtain and into the little eatery. He sat down, put his favorite pastime into its pocket on his flak jacket, and informed the pretty brown-haired young woman of his order.

* * *

"Naruto!" Haruno Sakura hissed, wrenching her eyes away from her crush just long enough to berate the idiot. "What do you think you're _doing?_"

Naruto looked over his shoulder at her and smirked at her. "Kakashi needs to learn," he said, turning back his collaborated effort with Spitfire, "that letting someone who knows you're coming," he pulled gently on the wire in front of his face and grinned when it didn't move, "have too much time," he brushed a hand against the doorframe, "to prepare for your arrival," he double-checked the coiled spring that held a platform of chalk-dust-filled erasers, "is never a good thing." He stepped back and walked over to his desk, where he unrolled his scroll and stared at it, mumbling something.

Sakura seethed when he proceeded to turn his back towards her in order to focus on whatever was on that paper. How dare he! He was supposed to pay attention to _her_, not some scrap of paper!

Not that she _wanted_ him to pay attention to her, she reminded herself, turning towards Sasuke-kun and fluttering her eyelashes in what she hoped was a flirtatious manner. She had Sasuke-kun to woo! Who would want attention from _Naruto_ of all people? No, it just annoyed her that he was deliberately ignoring her, after all his running after her and asking her out for the past few years.

**Asshole!**

She mentally shook her fist at the blonde as she watched her crush sigh and stand up. "Oi, dobe," Sasuke said.

"'sup?" Naruto replied, not looking away from what he was reading.

How dare he ignore Sasuke-kun!

Sakura clenched her fist and glared at the red spiral on the back of Naruto's jacket, wishing much pain and torturous death upon him.

"I need to use the toilet," Sasuke grunted. Naruto hummed in thought.

"That's gonna be tough. You can't get out through the door."

"Naruto! Quit being an idiot and let Sasuke-kun through!" Sakura snarled, practically bristling in anger.

"You can't get out through the door," he repeated. "Go out the window. We're on the first floor – not like there's a big drop to the ground."

Sasuke 'hnnned' and slid open the glass window. With a glance at Sakura, he said, "don't follow me," and hopped out.

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura called after him, her emotions warring between doing as Sasuke-kun told her to do, and being with Sasuke-kun wherever he went. The latter won after a minute of vicious battle and she climbed out the window and ran off after her crush.

Naruto sighed.

* * *

Kakashi's meal was surprisingly nice; it had everything one could possibly want in a little family-owned ramen stall: a few bowls of pork ramen, a pleasant atmosphere, a sexy little chef/waitress to shamelessly flirt with, and an annoyed father threatening him with a fairly dented frying pan.

Not bad. He might come here more often.

With a last parting wink at Ichiraku Ayame, Kakashi ducked back at and began walking once more. Something was bothering him, but he couldn't remember what it was…it was important, of that he was sure.

But what qualified as important?

There wasn't a new Icha Icha coming out – cue chuckle/giggle at the word 'coming' – for another two months, thirteen days, and a handful of hours and minutes. The next Icha Icha movie wasn't supposed to hit shelves for another two and a half years. He hadn't made any promises of food to his summons lately, so that wasn't it. Although, he should probably feed them soon anyway.

He hadn't heard of any A-rank assassination missions that needed doing. There wasn't a new librarian that he needed to go flirt with, or secretary in the Hokage's Tower, or shopkeeper in the market. There hadn't been any news of Jiraiya – god that he was – coming back to Konoha. He hadn't heard from Rin in years, neither through correspondence with her or from an official certificate of death; he honestly had no idea what happened to her. So it wasn't anything to do with her…

His feet carried him past the Shinobi Academy and he stopped. He backed up a few steps and looked over at the building.

Ah, yes. That was it. Today was the day he was supposed to get his newest team. And tomorrow was the day he was supposed to fail his newest team.

Kakashi smiled.

He so loved routine.

Humming to himself once more, he changed his direction and walked through the double-doors of the Academy. What impressionable adolescent youths would he get to corrupt today?

* * *

Naruto heard the window slide back open and said, "Did you get there without shitting yourself first?"

There was silence for a minute, before a grunt was given in response. Although that may have just been the chair groaning as it was sat upon.

"Sakura-chan didn't follow you into the bathroom, did she?" he joked.

Silence again. "She tried," Sasuke responded distastefully. Naruto chuckled, rolled up the scroll, and turned around to face his teammate.

"Sasuke-kun!"

Sasuke visibly cringed – something that Naruto seemed to find particularly funny, only to have him on the receiving end of the patented Uchiha Glare – as Sakura hopped back into the nearly-empty classroom. She immediately sat down in the seat next to her crush and placed her hands shyly in her lap.

Naruto huffed. Bastard. He wasn't so bad when his Club was absent, but whenever they showed up – especially Sakura-chan – he was all icy glares and biting retorts. Before today, Naruto would have said that Sasuke was the person that he most wanted to beat the shit out of. Now, the Uchiha had been bumped down to number two – something he knew would piss Sasuke off to no end if he ever told him – to make room for Hawkeye. No one had the right to say that Iruka-sensei was too soft to be a ninja. No one.

"Sakura-chaaaaaaan," he whined. "How long's it been since the other teams left?"

"Don't call me that!" She shook her fist at him. "And you know how to read a clock, figure it out yourself!" She turned back to Sasuke. "Don't let him distract you from our time together, Sasuke-kun," she said quietly.

Naruto looked up at the clock. Dammit. He knew how to read a _digital_ clock – the numbers were right there, after all – like the one he had by his bed, but regular clocks were beyond him. There were no numbers on any of them! Sure, he knew a little: he knew where the long stick and the short stick needed to point for school to begin, and where they needed to be for school to end. But no one had ever taught him what they _meant_. And don't even get him started on the really small, thin stick. That one moved faster than both of the others, and he had no idea why. It sure seemed useless though.

He pouted.

And he would have continued pouting, had something not happened at that exact moment. And was it something.

Naruto saw movement out of the corner of his eye and heard a slight clatter.

The door opened.

A tall man with silver hair and a hitai-ate over his eye stepped into the room.

And…

Naruto couldn't keep the grin off of his face.

...chaos.

* * *

Kakashi wasn't completely sure what happened within the last five seconds.

One moment, he had been sliding open the door to room 7C and stepping inside. The next thing he knew, he was in the air, strung up by standard-issue ninja wire attached to both wrists and his left ankle, his chest and face were completely covered with chalk dust, and three very guilty erasers lay motionless on the floor.

He sneezed.

Something about this was familiar, too, and why couldn't he put his finger on it. Perhaps because his hands were forcibly held up in the air and he really couldn't put his finger on anything at the moment. Perhaps because the chalk dust was affecting his thinking. Perhaps because it was rather hard to try and replay in slow-motion what just occurred when there is an orange-clad blonde standing in front of you, grinning like a loon.

He sneezed again.

The blonde stepped forward, the smile not wavering in the slightest – why did it look so damned familiar? – and reached a hand out.

Kakashi froze in horror as the tan fingers deftly flicked open the left front pocket on his (now chalky-white) flak jacket and dip in, curl around the object within, and withdraw it from the confines of cloth.

His Icha Icha. In the hands of…of…of not his own!

He gasped, and his visible eye widened.

"No…" the jounin breathed. That was why it was so familiar. That was what it was. That blasted grin, with him strung up like a piñata, with his favorite book in the hands of his tormenter. Now all that was left was…

He stared at the boy, frozen, as he awaited the final blow to his ego that he knew was coming.

"Good morning, Kakashi-_kun_," the boy said politely, grinning like a fox as he lifted his free hand and quickly flicked the older man on the nose.

The Hatake hung his head in defeat. His worst nightmare had come true.

He was not looking forward to this.

He was not looking forward to this at all.


	3. Chapter 3

The Marauders _ a Naruto fanfiction by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

Chapter Three

* * *

Blue and black.

Satisfaction and anguish.

Winner and loser.

Uzumaki Naruto and Hatake Kakashi.

"Do you think you could let me down?" the latter of the two asked calmly, attempting to sound as if this were just a normal occurrence, that it happened every day, and yes, he was quite comfortable being suspended in the air by three of his four limbs, thank you very much. His free foot tapped lightly against the floor.

The former adopted a thinking expression and Kakashi couldn't help but shake his head in wonder at the likeness of his father. "Depends," Naruto said after a long moment. "Do you still have dignity left?"

"Oh, it's around here somewhere, I'm sure," Kakashi responded lightly, as if he was simply discussing the weather with a friend.

The blonde nodded. "Yeah, I lose mine sometimes, too. It gets annoying after so many times, doesn't it?"

"Of course."

"By the way, did you want this back?" he asked, holding the orange book up.

"Yes, please. I was in the middle of reading it."

Naruto gave a thoughtful hum. A thoughtful hum that promised much painful suffering on Kakashi's part. "Well, seeing as you're all strung up at the moment, I think I'll hold onto it for now. Is that all right?"

Kakashi died a little inside, and wanted nothing more than to start crying inconsolably and curse the gods for their unfairness. Instead, what came out of his mouth was a very calm, "I suppose so."

"Thanks," Naruto said, opening his own jacket pocket and dropping the book inside. "You're not too bad, Kakashi-kun."

"Thank you. That means a lot to me."

Their mild banter would have gone like this for another half hour if outside forces hadn't interfered.

'Outside forces', when used in this context, can translate directly to 'Haruno Sakura's fist'.

Said force impacted the side of Naruto's skull, causing him to lurch to the right and slam into the chalkboard.

"Naruto!" the newly-revealed pink-haired female yelled. "Get your jounin-sensei down this _instant_!"

"Ugh…" the blonde mumbled as he sat up from his place on the ground. "But Sakura-chaaaaan…"

"Don't call me that!" Her fist crashed down on top of his head and sent him back to the floor.

Kakashi sneezed.

"Ah!" she whirled around to face him and gave a hasty bow. "I'm sorry, Kakashi-sensei! I apologize for my teammate's behavior and hope that it doesn't cause you to view the rest of us in a negative light!"

A dark-haired, pasty-faced boy stepped into the jounin's line of vision. Ah. The Last Uchiha. That made sense, he supposed.

"You are Kakashi-sensei?" he questioned.

Kakashi attempted to shrug, but with both arms tied up in a somewhat-awkward angle, it didn't really work out. So he bobbed his head from one side to the other and said, "I thought I was."

"You _thought_ you were," the Uchiha repeated.

"Truth be told, right now I feel more like a piñata then anything. And that one," he continued, nodding to the bleary-looking Naruto, "called me Kakashi-_kun_, so I'm not entirely sure anymore."

The pink-haired one whirled around, spitting fire, presumably to yell at Naruto for not having respect for their new sensei, only to find that he wasn't occupying the same space that he was a moment ago.

Kakashi sighed softly in relief as he was dropped to the ground, the wires on his hands and left foot cut. He gave them a quick shake to regain blood flow and said, "Thank you."

"Eh, no problem, sensei," Naruto replied, holstering his kunai.

The jounin cleared his throat as the three stood together in front of him. "First impressions," he announced, clapping his hands together and sending up a small cloud of white. He coughed. "I don't like you," he said, pointing to Sakura. Her eyes flashed angrily, and he saw her hands clench into fists. His finger moved over to the Uchiha. "I don't like you, either." Sasuke looked highly affronted.

"And _you_," Kakashi said, turning his whole body towards Naruto – who was still smiling, blast it all – and giving him a short glare. "I hate you with the burning passion of a thousand suns."

The grin only grew larger.

"Meet me on the roof," he finished shortly, before disappearing in a rush of air.

* * *

When Naruto got to the roof, the silver-haired jounin was already there, waiting.

Already there, with his flak jacket and facemask completely chalk-dust-free, Naruto noted. He hummed to himself as he walked towards his new sensei. That wouldn't do. He'd have to do something more permanent next time.

Like paint. Or colored glue. Or silly putty! Nothing stood up to silly putty – he'd put that stuff through extensive trials.

"What's up, sensei?" he asked aloud, trotting over and standing next to him.

"Sit," was all the man said. His left hand was visibly twitching, and it kept rising up towards his jacket pocket before he caught himself and lowered it back down.

Naruto grinned. "Porn withdrawal?"

"'Porn with a _plot_' withdrawal," Kakashi corrected automatically.

"Of course." He tilted his head to the right. "It's not been ten minutes, and you're already suffering from being without your fix? Man, sensei, you need help." Kakashi glared at him. "Is there a porn rehab clinic, or something, that you can go to? Perverts Anonymous? Anything?"

"No." Glare.

"Too bad. I'm really sorry, sensei. That must suck for you and all your porn-reading friends."

"Sit down and shut up, kid," he ended up saying in defeat, sighing and shaking his head.

"Of course, sensei!" And thus, Naruto sat.

Sakura and Sasuke showed up a moment later and aped his actions, sitting cross-legged on the stone roof and looking expectantly at the Hatake.

"Okay…" Kakashi looked up at them. He ticked points off on his fingers as he said them, "first name – since I don't care about your last – and class position in the Academy, likes, dislikes – keep it simple – and…" He trailed off and looked up pensively at the sky. "…and one secret about yourself. Uchiha, you go first."

Sasuke seemed to mull it over for a minute before opening up his mouth – with his hands half-covering his mouth like that in his brooding pose, it would be a wonder if they could hear him at all – and saying, "Sasuke, top of the class, Rookie of the Year. I like very little, but the thing that stands out is…" his eyes glanced over at Sakura "…when my fangirls are nowhere near me." Sakura looked crestfallen. "My list of dislikes is much larger than my likes, so I'll settle for telling you that don't like my little 'fan club', I don't like coffee, and I especially don't like dango." His eyes dropped to the ground and he frowned in what was either contemplation or constipation. "And my secret is…my secret…" he trailed off.

"No secrets, Sasuke-kun?" Kakashi asked cheerfully. "So you're an honest man, through and through, eh? Come one." He poked at the boy's knee. "Tell Uncle Kakashi a dirty little secret."

"I…" Dark eyes met blue. "I…envy…Naruto."

That brought reality screeching to a stop.

Two people raised surprised eyebrows. One gaped like a fish out of water.

Three guesses as to who did what.

"You…_envy_ me?" the blonde repeated incredulously.

"You," Kakashi said slowly, pointing at Sasuke, "envy him," he finished and pointed to Naruto.

Sakura didn't seem able to form words at how much of a betrayal this was to her entire view of Sasuke-kun.

"Why?" Kakashi wanted to know.

Sasuke turned his face away from the rest of his team, staring off into the distance instead. "You said I had to tell a secret. There was no mention of me having to explain myself."

Kakashi nodded. He had a point. "True. Very good." He cleared his throat and pointed at Sakura. "You next."

Sakura stiffened for a moment before blinking rapidly and looking around. She let out a long breath and began, shakily, "My n-name is Haru…I mean, S-Sakura, sensei. I- I mean, I was first place in academics, but lower on the practical application, so I was around the middle." She was speaking normally now. "I like…" She looked over at Sasuke and blushed. She cleared her throat. "I dislike Ino-pig, Naruto, and very spicy foods. My secret is…" Her eyes trailed over to Sasuke again.

"The fact that you have a crush on our little Uchiha is in no way a secret," Kakashi said dismissively. She opened her mouth. "Neither is the fact that you want his babies." She closed her mouth. "_Actual_ secrets, please."

Sasuke looked horrified. And very, very uncomfortable.

"I…Ino-pig is my best friend," she said finally.

"That's better, isn't it?" Kakashi replied. "_I_ certainly didn't know that, at any rate. From what I've heard, most think you two want to tear each other's throats out with forks. Moving on!" He swung his arm up and, in one smooth motion, brought it down dramatically to point directly at Naruto. "The Hated One. You're up."

Naruto grinned.

"My name's Naruto!" he practically shouted, causing Kakashi to visibly balk at the volume. "I was the dead last in the Academy, just below Shikamaru, the lazy bastard that he is!" The Hatake was waving his hands in a downward, placating gesture; it meant 'you're too goddamn loud, brat, so stop trying to burst my eardrums'. Naruto, if anything, only got louder. "I like gardening, ramen, Iruka-sensei, Hokage-jiji, pranks, and four particular people who shall remain nameless! I dislike getting punished for my pranks, waiting the three minutes for cup ramen to be ready to eat, and anyone who calls Iruka-sensei too soft to be a ninja!" The blonde frowned as if he tasted something particularly unpleasant and glared at the scroll in his hand, spitting out, "bastard."

"My secret is…well, there's actually a lot of them, but I'll go with how I just recently beat the shit out of Mi-"

"Try again," Kakashi said immediately, cutting him off. Naruto looked at him incredulously. "They don't know that. I did. They don't have to know that. Tell us something I would not know." Naruto frowned, and thought.

"Well, in that case…" He scratched his head, as his voice trailed off to a normal volume. "I always wanted to write a book, I guess." He could almost hear eyebrows being raised.

"And…" Kakashi said, "…the book you're holding hostage…that's, what, inspiration?"

"Eh?" Naruto's hand came up over his left jacket pocket, feeling the contours of the hard-covered work of erotic literature through the rough fabric. "Gah! No!" His face contorted. "_No!_"

The jounin out of the four just shrugged. "If you say so." He found the confused looks that Sakura and Sasuke were sending their teammate particularly amusing.

"Ugh…so what now, sensei?" Naruto asked, glaring at him.

"Well…" he said in a sing-song voice, smiling – at least, it _looked_ like the man was smiling; his eye certainly seemed to be reflecting that action – at his students, "…I suppose, since we all know each other a little better now, the next order of business is to retire for today, and meet up tomorrow."

Blink. Blink.

"Eh?"

"You mean we're _done_ for today?"

"Yup!" came the all-too cheerful reply. "We just have one big thing to do tomorrow, as well, so I wouldn't worry about having your whole day sucked away from you – kids have to have fun and all that, so I can't have you guys doing missions until midnight!" The Hatake stood and looked down at his students. "Meet tomorrow…mid-morning, around this time, at…" He bobbed his head thoughtfully. "…yes, at Training Area Seven. It matches our team number!" he added excitedly.

And just as he was turning to leave, he heard Sakura quietly ask, "What book was Kakashi-sensei talking about?"

He vanished.

It wasn't until a few minutes later, when he was walking into the store that sold his smut (he needed a new Icha Icha Paradise – there was no telling how long Naruto was going to keep his for), that Kakashi realized that he hadn't told his newest team not to eat breakfast. Oops. He shrugged. Oh well. He could always improvise. The whole eating thing was just one last lifeline that he threw to them. If they didn't have that extra safety measure, well…that would just make things that much more impressive if they passed, wouldn't it?

* * *

Shino frowned.

Well, to be more accurate, Shino gave the Shino-equivalent of a normal person frowning; it was more like a slight crease between his eyebrows than anything else. Barely noticeable. But it was there all the same.

No one saw it. No one ever saw it. He was unsure if that was a positive or negative fact.

At this moment, however, he had no patience to objectively analyze the outcome should he choose between the two. He simply could not focus his mind on anything, anything except one Uzumaki Naruto.

The boy seemed so simple at first glance, so transparent: he sought attention, so he was loud, he played pranks on others, he deliberately screwed up so someone would notice him. He wanted to prove himself, so he gave himself a dream to strive for, a near-unattainable dream. He had a crush on Sakura because she stuck out, she was different, she was unique; something else to strive for, something else nigh-impossible to reach. He set his goals high so he would force himself to do the very best that he could.

But once he was looked at closer, once someone took the time to stop and _really_ look at him, like Shino had, they saw that the previously simple-looking mechanization that was Naruto was actually multiple layers of complexities – the pieces of him simply connected together in such a way that made it all seem so simple. He wasn't transparent; he was built out of mirrors, thousands of mirrors so perfectly placed that it only seemed like he was see-through.

Naruto could flip you and warp you and show you exactly who you were, if he so chose. He had that kind of ability, that talent. And it was a humbling thought.

It was humbling to think that the blonde could have grown up, through all his hardships, and turn out as well as he had; that he bore no ill will on those who had harmed him was amazing in and of itself. That he had the Nine-tailed Demon Fox sealed inside him, and kept it from getting out or ever influencing his actions. Because – oh yes, Shino knew about the Kyuubi. He had suspected something akin to that for the past year that they had had class together, and his suspicions had just been confirmed the previous night.

Shino – the cunning, ever-cautious, perfectionist Aburame that he was – had planted at least one Kikai beetle on every single one of his classmates. It was, he reasoned, a logical way to keep track of their habits, skills, and chakra levels while they weren't at school, where he could not watch over them himself.

He had been in the middle of studying the newest pupae of the ground/air kikai offspring when he felt something. He felt something change, he felt a bond…break. He recognized it as the sensation of one of his kikai being killed.

When kikai insects are introduced to an Aburame infant – their host – the first thing they do is burrow through the skin and latch onto the chakra pathways. They are imbued with the user's chakra, making it infinitely easier for them to find the human and the human to find them. Some Aburame have stronger connections with their kikai than others; one such Aburame being Shino. Shino had been able to feel his bond with the bugs since before he could walk. When one of them got stepped on, or was otherwise killed by an unknowing civilian, he cried. He cried because he could literally feel the small bit of insect chakra break up and bind with his own before dissipating.

It had been a long time since he had cried about that, since he'd cried about anything, but he knew the sensation for what it was. And the kikai hadn't been squashed. It had been obliterated, and their chakras had been snuffed out instead of spread. The only thing that could do that was particularly high levels of foreign chakra.

It had come from the forest.

It hadn't taken Shino long to disperse a small cloud of kikai towards that area. It had, however, taking a great deal of time for them to finally come back: almost two hours. The news that they had given him had been startling.

Uzumaki Naruto could produce solid bunshin. Mizuki had tried to kill both him and Iruka-sensei. Uzumaki Naruto had the Great Demon sealed inside him.

It explained a great deal, Shino had thought logically to himself: why his kikai were always so hesitant to settle down on the boy. Why the boy was never even winded in their class spars, even with half of his colony feeding off of his chakra reserves. Why he never seemed to have any injury for more than a few minutes at a time. Why everyone hated him.

It was because he had something inside of him that people didn't like. And they couldn't hurt or kill the being inside, so they had to settle with doing so to what was on the outside.

Shino could empathize.

And he knew that that was a rare thing, for both Naruto and himself.

The only question was what to do now? How should he approach this situation? Attempt to befriend the boy? Tell him exactly what it meant to be a holder, as opposed to the held?

He had no idea how Naruto would respond. He simply could not cause a situation that he had no control over.

He gave a twitch of his head – equivalent to a normal person shaking their head from side to side – and gave Kurenai-sensei his attention. It would not do to miss out on her first words as a team.

He would have to think about Naruto later.

* * *

_Spitfire, in light of the kid's previous successes in the world as a simple prankster, would like to be the first to congratulate the kid on his first success as an honorary Prankster._

"Oh, stop it," Naruto chuckled. "You're making me blush, 'fire."

_Irons wishes he could give the owner a high-five._

"Yeah, sorry about that. The whole 'not having a corporal form' thing must suck, huh?"

_Sparky would like to assure the new owner that he has __**no**__ idea, and that the main reason for Hawkeye-san's grouchy mood is that he can't masturbate when he's just a few words on a piece of paper._

"I don't know about that. I'm sure he could find a way, if he tried hard enough."

Sakura and Sasuke had long since left the vicinity of the school. Naruto never left. He was still sitting on top of the roof, chatting animatedly with the Shinobi's Scroll; he had just finished recounting some of his bigger pranks – including, but not limited to, painting the Hokage Monument, pouring glue into every coffee-maker in the Hokage Tower and ANBU Headquarters alike, blowing up the toilet seats in the Academy in celebration of his tenth birthday, stealing and setting fire to every single pair of underwear that the Hyuuga clan owned, and making Mitarashi Anko think that some guy named Genma had completely wiped the stores clean of any and all dango before she could make her weekly food run. The result of that last one had not been pretty.

Poor guy.

When he told his stories, the four incessantly interjected, sometimes with their own little stories, sometimes with little random comments, but mostly with recognitions – people or places that caused one of them to go "oh, hey, I used to know that!" and push Naruto for further information on the subject. All of them were rather disappointed when he couldn't tell them how 'little Anko' was doing these days – aside from Hawkeye, of course, who wouldn't refrain from referring to her as 'that psychotic bitch Mitarashi' – since apparently they knew her from the days of yore.

That's about when Naruto asked them what the hell 'yore' was.

Only after Irons finished explaining that yes, 'yore' really was a word, and no, he didn't accidentally misspell 'you're', 'your', or any other word, and no, he would probably never have to hear or use that word ever in casual conversation, did Naruto start asking the Pranksters a little bit about what they knew from their time.

Specifics were a hard thing to get at; for example, although Naruto had picked up on the fact that both Hawkeye and Sparky were at least somewhat familiar with Kakashi-sensei back in their day, when he tried to ask how they knew him, and if they were family or friends or team members, they made an excuse seventy percent of the time and quickly changed the subject. The other thirty percent of the time, they would dutifully say that they could not tell him.

Naruto was unsure if that meant that they _wouldn't_ tell him, or that they literally _couldn't_ tell him – compared to putting the consciousnesses of four different people onto a piece of paper that only reacted with chakra, could only be seen by the reactant, had an acute awareness of the going-ons around them, and seemed to both remember things from before they were bound and learn new information as it was presented to them, making sure that they couldn't blurt out a few secrets seemed like it would be rather simple.

If it were the latter, he was pretty sure that there was some way around it. He'd find it eventually.

_Sparky wonders just how one masturbates when one doesn't have any of the body parts necessary for such an event._

"Well, there's always, what was it, 'porn with a plot'," Naruto said, quoting Kakashi. "If Hawkeye wrote his own little sex scene, with himself in it, that could – in some messed-up way – count, couldn't it?" He shrugged.

_Hawkeye has always felt that he could make a good porno._

_Spitfire longs for a fork so she could stab her nonexistent eyes out._ Naruto couldn't help but note that the violence, for once, was in no way directed towards him – even though he made a somewhat-perverted comment. If Spitfire had been Sakura when he said that same thing…he shuddered to think of the consequences. He smiled a little. Even though Spitfire was clearly every bit as violent as his pink-haired crush – maybe all girls were like that? – none of her violent tendencies, well, descriptions, rather, were ever focused upon him. They usually threatened herself, or one of the other Pranksters. Oh, and Kakashi-sensei.

_Irons is going to puke._ Immediately after that sentence appeared a large, black/blue splotch of ink. Naruto made a face before chuckling a little.

_Sparky would like to ask the new owner why he doesn't think before he speaks._

"Hey! I do too think!" He childishly stuck his tongue out at the scroll. "And stop calling me 'new owner'. I'm not new!"

_Spitfire would like to add that he doesn't think nearly as often as he should, and-_

"But 'fire…" he whined.

_-that the kid is also an honorary Prankster, and as such is in need of a name if he doesn't want to be called 'owner' or 'kid' for the rest of the time that he has our scroll._

"A…name?"

_Irons says that the owner needs a nickname like them: Spitfire, Sparky, Hawkeye, Irons – something that relates to the owner in some way, but not in such a direct way that his or her identity is obvious._

"I take it that that means it's the same with you guys?"

_Sparky will answer with a definite 'maybe'._

_Hawkeye concedes that with the little knowledge of their personalities and the information of their pasts that they have been allowed to share, figuring out who the Pranksters were is in no way impossible._

Naruto frowned. It almost sounded like Hawkeye wanted him to find out who they were. He voiced his confusion on that thought, and waited patiently while they seemed to think it over.

_The Pranksters admit,_ they finally wrote as one, all four writing styles present as the sentence appeared, _that they are curious…as to what has happened to them since they had been bound to the Scroll._

Ah. That made sense: four people managed to put their consciousness into an object, and had been there without contact with their real selves for years. It would stand to reason that they would want to know what the hell happened to those people, what happened to _them_.

A loud growling sound tore Naruto's attention away from the scroll. He looked around warily before remembering that giant tigers tended to stay in the Forest of Death and did not, in fact, make a habit of prowling around on the roof of the Shinobi Academy. He relaxed for a moment before the growling made itself known once again. He looked down.

Oh.

That was his stomach.

He mentally ticked points off: no dinner last night, no breakfast this morning, no lunch yet – and what time was it, anyway? He looked up in the sky and was confused to see it past the mid-point of the sky.

After noon? Already?

Growl.

Right.

"Don't worry, you guys." He paused. "And gal," he added as an afterthought. "It might take a while, but I'll figure out what happened to you; I would have done it even if you hadn't asked – I'm just as curious as you are." There was no reply, but Naruto had the strangest sense that they were pleased with his response. He gave them a small smile and said, "c'mon. I want to get some lunch."

It only took him a few minutes to slam into his regular seat at Ichiraku's, the words "Two beef, one shrimp, one pork" leaving his mouth before he stopped moving. Ayame and her father didn't even react as the orange blur hit the wooden seat and counter with a loud _crack_ – it had happened far too often in the last half-decade for them to be surprised anymore.

"Hey, Naruto," Ayame said, smiling at him as he bounced up and down in over-the-top anticipation.

"Hey, kid," her father grunted, his back to the blonde as he started up the order.

"Hi! Okay, so, I just got my new genin team! It's really cool – I got Sakura-chan and the Bastard, and I got a new sensei too, though he's kind of a lazy punk: he's really tall, though, and he has a lot of grey hair – it stands up straight, but it didn't look like he gelled it or anything, so I guess his hair is just naturally freaky like that – and wears a mask over the bottom half of his face and his headband over one of his eyes, so you really can't see anything but one of his eyes," Naruto was saying rapidly, chattering on and waving his arms around in wild hand gestures, oblivious to the atmosphere as it got more and more tense the more he described this sensei. Ichiraku was shooting annoyed looks at Ayame as his hands worked faster and more wild with each word Naruto said, "and he was really late meeting with us, so I set up a prank for him in the school and when he was strung up like a piece of meat, I stole the porn book out of his pocket-" Ichiraku was now downright glaring at his daughter "-and humiliated him a bit-"

"Naruto."

"-and I don't think he likes me too much because of it but that's perfectly-"

"Naruto," Ayame repeated.

"-okay because he doesn't have to like me to teach me, right?"

"Yes. Naruto," Ayame said quickly after her agreement in order to keep Naruto from continuing from where he stopped, "didn't you say to me yesterday morning that if you graduated, you were supposed to meet at the Academy at 7:30, and get your teams picked out then?"

"Yeah," Naruto said at a more sedate pace, "but our jounin-sensei-" Ayame pointedly ignored her father's disapproving glare "-was really really late, like, _over two hours_ late."

"So what did you do for the other three, four hours after that, then?"

Naruto smiled. "I was hanging out with some friends."

"Your team?" Ichiraku grunted in question.

"Nah. The Bastard's a bastard and wouldn't hang out with me 'cause he's a bastard, and Sakura-chan wouldn't hang out with me if I was the last living thing on the planet."

"So?" Ayame prodded. Literally. She poked him in the shoulder with her finger as she set Naruto's first bowl on the counter in front of him.

"Ah, itadakimasu," he said quickly, breaking his chopsticks apart and taking a bite. He gave a noodly grin as she poked him again, harder. Swallowing, he said, "So what?"

"Naruto-o-o-o," she whined with another poke. "Don't be so mean. You _know_ I want to meet your new friends – who are they?" Poke. "And would I know them?" Poke, poke. "And if you keep eating instead of answering me, I'm going to hurt you."

Naruto stopped eating. After a moment, he said, "hey, old man, are you condoning this? Physical violence against me, just because-"

"Physical violence against you is always condoned by me," Ichiraku replied, cutting the blonde off. "It's funny." Naruto pouted and crossed his arms childishly over his chest.

"You guys are evil."

Poke.

"Alright, already!" He grumbled to himself for another minute before lifting his hand and setting a scroll on top of the counter. It rolled open with a flick of his wrist, sending a blank, off-white canvas over the wood. He took a generous bite of his lunch and poked at the paper. "Hey, guys, you there?" He could feel Ayame staring at the top of his head – he was worrying her. He didn't like to worry her.

_Irons is here! Irons is here!_

_Hawkeye would like to remind the reader that he's a moron – they are always here, because they are __**bound**__ to the scroll._

_Sparky admonishes Hawkeye-san, telling him to be more polite._

_Spitfire would like everyone to shut the fuck up._

"Yeah, hi," he said, grinning. "I was just wondering, is there a way that I can let other people see you guys?"

_Hawkeye would like to know why exactly the reader would __**want**__ other people to be able to see what we say._

_Sparky admonishes Hawkeye-san once more, telling him that the owner is friends with the ones that he is talking to, and wishes to introduce us – friends to friends._

_Hawkeye thinks that that is a horrid idea, and is appalled at being referred to as one of the readers' so-called 'friends'._

_Irons thinks that it is rather lucky that what Hawkeye-teme thinks doesn't matter in the least._

"…Naruto?" Ayame said carefully.

"Just wait a minute, Ayame-chan," he answered quickly, holding up a hand. "Sparky, since you're the leading knowledge on all of this, do you have any ideas?" he asked the paper. Ayame shared a look with her dad.

The Prankster didn't answer immediately, seeming to mull it over for a minute, before his flowing script appeared: _Sparky admits that the process in letting someone else read the Scroll is rather simple, just rarely done, as the owner is usually paranoid enough not to show us to someone on a whim._

"It's not a whim," Naruto growled. "Ayame-chan's my friend, and I want you to meet her and her to meet you."

_Sparky realizes this – he was not saying that, just that we are not shown very often. All that the owner's friend has to do is push a little bit of her own chakra into the paper at the same time as the owner. The owner's friend's chakra mixes with the owner's, and lets us be able to recognize it and reveal ourselves. And if chakra is an absolute impossibility for the owner's friend, an amount of blood would be required instead._

Naruto frowned. "Neh, Ayame-chan?" He looked up at her, wincing out the open alarm and sadness in her eyes. He tried to ignore it for the moment. "Did you ever learn how to feel your chakra as a kid?" The waitress nodded, hesitantly.

"My best friend helped me do that much after she became a ninja," she admitted, not taking her eyes away from him. She was scared for him.

"Can you still do it?"

"I think so." She gave him one more worried look before she closed her eyes and concentrated, a crease forming between her eyebrows and her jaw clenching. It took just over five minutes, and sweat had begun dotting her forehead when the air around her hands shimmered a little and gave off a soft blue glow. He grinned and copied her, blue chakra of his own flashing across his palm.

"Touch the scroll."

Ayame cracked open an eye and looked into his. She nodded and gently caressed her hand over the paper. Naruto pressed his full hand onto it and smirked as he heard Ayame let out a small gasp and felt the small pull on his chakra. It stopped, and Naruto felt his energies settle. He withdrew his hand and poked the scroll with his finger once again.

"You guys still there?" A reply formed almost immediately.

_Hawkeye isn't even going to dignify the reader's question with a response anymore._

An intake of breath was all he needed to know that his friend could see the writing. "Cool, huh?" he said quietly, smiling.

"It's…they…it's not a…ginjetsu?" she tried, looking up at him.

"Genjutsu? Nope. As far as I can tell, those are, quite literally, the minds of four old people."

_Spitfire would like to know just who the kid is calling 'old'._

"Well, old right now. Not when they put their minds into the paper," Naruto elaborated quickly. He really didn't want to get on Spitfire's bad side, even if she couldn't do anything to hurt him. "Their minds are probably young adults." He paused. "Except Irons. He seems mentally stuck at about six."

_Irons finds it very offensive that the owner would think that Irons is a little kid._

Naruto watched as Ayame's face shifted from confusion to doubt to interest as each Prankster spoke up. "So…they know what's going on?"

"Right now? Sure."

"But they don't know what happened to them?"

"Nope. They have no idea what's become of their real selves." Naruto took a mouthful of ramen and finished his first bowl.

Ayame 'hmmed' to herself as her brow furrowed slightly. "These are your friends?"

"Yeah!" Naruto began to whisper excitedly. "They're really cool! They were all pranksters when they were young, so they've been helping me out a bit. Spitfire was the one who told me how to string up Kakashi-sensei."

"Kakashi-sensei?"

"The Cyclops."

_Sparky would like to know what he means by that._

"Oh. Well, he has his headband over one of his eyes," Naruto explained when he noticed the sentence.

_Sparky is very curious about Kakashi-kun's new fashion sense._

"I'll tell you all about his fashion sense later, Sparky," Naruto said impatiently. "I gotta introduce you guys to Ayame-chan first!" He took a bite of his next helping of ramen. "Ayame-chan, I want you to meet my friends, the Pranksters of Konoha: Sparky, Spitfire, Hawkeye, and Irons. Guys, this is Ayame-chan," he introduced with flourish, pointing to each party as he spoke.

_Spitfire would like to say that it is very nice to meet the kid's friend Ayame, and says that she should try to ignore whatever Hawkeye says._

_Hawkeye has nothing to say._

_Irons thinks that that is a relief to everyone here._

Ayame laughed under her breath. "Are they always like this?"

"What, ganging up on Hawkeye? Yeah. He's a bastard, though, so I don't care; he made fun of Iruka-sensei!"

The ramen chef winced. She and her father both knew how close Naruto and Iruka-san were; to insult one of them in the others' presence promised trouble. "Well then, he deserves whatever they do to him, then, doesn't he."

"Yes. Yes he does."

Two more bowls plopped onto the counter, letting Naruto start in on his third. "Friends inside a scrap of paper, huh?" Ichiraku muttered, staring at it. He grunted. "Too bad I never learned how to use my chakra for anything. Can't even see the guys you were hangin' out with fer four hours." He gave his daughter a quick pat on the shoulder before walking into the back of the restaurant.

"Do you need a hug, old man?" Naruto called after him.

"No!" came the shouted reply.

"Denial!" Naruto yelled back, shooting a grin at Ayame. She smiled back. They dropped their eyes to the paper as one as a new sentence appeared.

_Sparky would like to greet the newest reader of our scroll, and would also like to remark on how very fun her interactions are with our owner._

"Thank you very much, Sparky-san," Ayame said politely. "Naruto's like a little brother to me. I get to pick on him, tease him, spread mischief with him, and everything else a sibling does without having to actually live with him." She shot a smirk at the blonde. "Which is a relief to everyone, really."

"Aww," Naruto grinned, "you're so sweet, Ayame-chan." She leaned over the counter and wacked him over the head.

"Shut up, kid."

"Jerk."

"Brat."

"Idiot."

"Asshole."

They grinned at each other.

"So," Ayame said after a few minutes of letting Naruto finish of his ramen in peace, "what are you doing, now that you're a ninja?"

_Hawkeye would like to crush the excitement before it flourishes, and just outright tell the reader that the first few months will be nothing except D-rank missions._

"D-ranks? Are they bad?"

_Irons would like to point out that the suicide rate for missions is actually highest during D-ranks._

_Spitfire will add her two cents and say that they are among the most mundane, boring jobs on the planet, like walking dogs, weeding gardens, babysitting children, and searching for particularly elusive cats._

"…they're that bad?"

_Hawkeye laughs at the reader's ignorance. They're __**worse**__._

"Damn." He looked at Ayame. "Well, I guess that that's your answer. Although tomorrow we're meeting up with Kakashi-sensei for something. We might be starting training or something."

_Hawkeye doubts it, when he factors in the Hatake's other more unsavory habits._

"Ignore him," Naruto told the ramen girl. "He's not important enough to pay attention to."

"I can understand that," she said, nodding seriously.

He looked at her for a moment before grinning suddenly and saying, "Me and my training's not important, though! What's been up with you?" He winked. "Got a boyfriend yet?"

Something crashed loudly in the back room where her father was. Swearwords quickly followed.

"I hardly think that that is your business, Naruto," Ayame said with a thin smile.

"Aww, come o-o-o-on!" Naruto whined. "I'd tell you if _I_ had a girlfriend!"

"Do you?"

"I'm twelve!"

"Plenty old enough," Ayame retorted.

"Why won't you answer my question?"

"Why won't you stop whining about me not answering your question?"

"Because you're evil, wicked, and an all-around bitch!"

He suddenly found himself staring up at the afternoon sky, without the faintest idea how he got there. Hm. He was sitting, yelling at Ayame, and then he was here. Could he teleport? Sweet! But why would he teleport onto his back in the middle of a dusty street instead of a secluded island where ramen flowed like waterfalls across the land?

Hm. Maybe not teleportation, then.

Why did his head hurt? He frowned as he looked at the sky. It was nice, he decided. Not pretty like the night sky, but nice all the same.

Ow. Damn head. Why'd it have to go hurting like that for no reason.

"Don't call me a bitch," Ayame said, suddenly standing over him. She was holding a dented frying pan. Ah. That might explain a few things.

"But you call _me_ a bitch," he whined.

"I have seniority," she said with a smirk. She held out a hand. He took it and she pulled him to his feet. "And no, I don't have a boyfriend."

"You could have just said that in the first place, you know," he said as they walked back into the shop.

"No, I couldn't have."

"If you say so. Crazy bitch."

And he was staring at the sky again.

* * *

Yamanaka Ino decided, as she arrived in a panting heap at the feet of her jounin-sensei, that she hated life. Specifically, she hated _her_ life. The gods must hate her life, too. They had, after all, put her into this torturous path of existence: becoming a shinobi and getting teamed-up with a lazy-ass and a fat-ass for teammates, and a lazy-ass cancer statistic for a sensei; a cancer statistic who apparently decided that the best way to figure out if he should bother with the extra work of taking them on as his genin or to just send them all back to the Academy was to have them run around Konoha seven times.

In a row.

_Gods above_, she hated her life.

So there she was, leaning over in front of Sarutobi Asuma, her hands on her knees and her lungs working like a bellows. She raised her head enough to catch a glimpse of his face. He had a single eyebrow raised against his tanned skin. She let her head drop, and stared at the grass beneath her.

"Not bad," she heard him murmur around his ever-present cigarette. "Not bad at all, girly."

"It's…Ino…you bas-…you bastard," she panted, jerking her head up for a moment to shoot the jounin a glare.

"Of course it is, girly." Ino growled. "Where are the other two?"

"How the hell…should I know?"

"They're your teammates, aren't they?"

"They're…_your_ students…idiot!"

"No need for name-calling, girly."

"Ino!"

"Of course."

Asshole.

"Oh, there's one of them," Asuma said suddenly, managing to sound wholly uninterested at the whole situation. Ino looked up and saw the form of Nara Shikamaru traipsing calmly past. "Pineapple-hair kid! What lap are you on?"

"Two," came the reply without change in posture or pace.

"It'd work better if you were actually running!" Ino yelled, breaking down coughing directly after.

"Too much work," she heard the shadow-user say as he walked away.

Other asshole.

"Hm. He doesn't seem too concerned, does he?" Asuma asked his might-be-student. Ino just bellowed several violent curses within the confines of her mind. After a moment, he said, "Wonder where the other one is."

* * *

Several hundred meters away, at that exact moment, one Akimichi Chouji belched loudly in satisfaction and patted his round stomach fondly. Barbeque Tuesdays at the local meat shack were exactly what made Tuesdays his favorite day of the week.

* * *

Dammit, the chain smoker sensei was going to fail them. It was inevitable. Her team as good as failed, and she was going to get sent back to the Academy and suffer through another year of schooling before she could attempt for another team. She was going to be the only girl in their year to get sent back, and she'll have to endure a new class where she'd get stared at and worshipped by people who _weren't Sasuke-kun!_ She couldn't have that!

That would be a whole year that Forehead would have Sasuke-kun to herself. She couldn't participate on joint-missions with Team Seven if she didn't have a team!

Dammit, dammit, _dammit!_

"You know…" the jounin said, letting his voice trail off as he thought. Ino braced herself. This was it. He was going to tell her that they failed. She was going to have to tell Shika and Chouji that they were refused a team because he was too lazy and he was too gluttonous. She'd have to kill the more annoying one; although, since at this point she was unsure as to which one that was, she might have to kill both of them. That would work.

He took a breath in. She closed her eyes.

Here it came…

"…I think I'll take you three."

What?

"What?"

"Hm?" Ino looked up to see Asuma – and apparently, as of this moment, Asuma_-sensei_ – looking back down at her, his eyebrow raised again. He didn't even blink when the downward tilt of his head caused his cigarette smoke to drift up and swirl over his eyes.

"What?" Ino repeated, feeling more than just a little foolish.

"You guys pass," the Sarutobi replied simply. The Yamanaka stared at him blankly for another full minute. "Be sure to tell the other two when they finish. Wherever they are." He slipped the cancer stick from his lips and looked at it thoughtfully. "I want my new team to meet me by the Hokage Memorial tomorrow at about one in the afternoon; I like to sleep in. And be sure to bring a bit of food with, 'cause I plan on keeping you guys there through chow. Good?" he asked as he screwed the cigarette back in place. Ino nodded, slowly, still digesting the fact that her and the other two had passed, despite their major flaws.

"I…guess…" she mumbled.

"Good. Catch ya then."

She could only blink rapidly as he walked away.

What the hell just happened?

* * *

"What do you guys think I should have for dinner?" Naruto asked as he loudly opened and closed several of his mostly-empty cupboards. Several hours had passed since he frequented Ichiraku's, and the boy found himself plagued by hunger once more. And hunger, like so many other things, could be solved by one thing in particular. "Beef ramen, pork ramen, shrimp ramen, or chicken ramen?" Okay, so one thing in general.

_Hawkeye says none of it, and that the reader should starve himself and die._

_Irons says the shrimp, definitely._

_Sparky says that the owner should forget ramen and go get some yakitori._

_Spitfire says three of every single goddamn one of them._

"'fire, you genius!" Naruto crowed as he proceeded to do exactly that. He snatched up three cups of beef, pork, shrimp, and chicken ramen and savagely began tearing off lids and pouring boiling water inside. "And screw you, Sparky, you heathen," he called over his shoulder as he set the lids back on the styrofoam cups. "Hawkeye, you can go die." He poured the little water he had left out into the sink. "And Irons…eh, you just have to try harder. Your heart wasn't into the ramen." He glanced at the paper as he tossed the kettle into the sink to dry.

_Spitfire knows._

The smugness was almost palpable.

_Sparky is sorry that Spitfire and the owner share the conspicuous lack of correct taste buds, as yakitori beats that salty garbage any day of the week._

_Hawkeye doesn't know why he talks anymore._

_Irons will do better next time!_

_Spitfire resolutely agrees with the kid that Sparky is a heathen, and would shove yakitori up his rectum and see how much he liked it __**then**__, if she could._

Naruto shot a grin at the paper before saying, "so what d'you guys think about Kakashi-sensei's meeting thing tomorrow?"

_Spitfire thinks that, meeting or no, this will serve to be another opportunity to prank Kakashi-kun._

_Sparky wishes that Spitfire's answer to everything was something besides 'let's prank it'._

_Spitfire wishes that Sparky's answer to everything was something besides 'let's seal it'._

_Irons hopes that Kakashi-san will teach the owner and his team something cool, at least. If not, though, Irons is open to Spitfire-san's suggestion._

"Yeah, he better," the blonde agreed, grinning at the second sentence of Irons'. "It would be totally lame if we got there and he told us something stupid, like 'you'll be starting your missions tomorrow' or some other pointless announcement." He scratched his head. "So, I've been wondering…"

_Hawkeye must say that he is not surprised, as the reader tends to wonder a lot more than he tends to think._

"Bastard," Naruto said as he grabbed the nearest cup and took a large bite of shrimp ramen. "No, but, I've been wondering: is writing what you guys 'say' the only thing you can do? Or can you draw things on the paper to – like, if I wanted a map of Konoha," he said, waving his chopsticks around in thought, "could you make that?"

Almost immediately, lines began to spring up from the paper, connecting and curling to create a simple noose. But then more things were added: a leg in the noose – connected to a body, arms, and a head – ants on the rope, what looked like copious amounts of either grape jelly or hot fudge, and a variety of dogs barking up at the figure. Writing began to appear next to the pictures, in Irons' handwriting, saying things like '_fire ants – not regular_', '_at least three quarts of melted, unsweetened chocolate_', and '_small dogs annoy victim the most_'.

_Irons assumes that this answers the owners question._

"Quite," Naruto affirmed. He looked critically at the drawing as he drained the last of the noodles from his cup. "What is this little trap made to achieve?" he asked. He grabbed another cup and wolfed it down.

_Irons says that it really wasn't made for anything specific, just to be mildly annoying._

"Well, that's boring," Naruto huffed. "You got anything better, Irons? I want to have some ideas for Kakashi-sensei tomorrow."

_Irons would like little better than sharing every single one of his pranks with the owner, but he believes that the owner should think up a prank of this magnitude on his own._

Naruto scratched the back of his head in an embarrassed gesture. "True!" he said, grinning sheepishly. "Sorry 'bout that, guys. If I want to be a Prankster, I gotta think of my own material, eh?"

_Sparky is glad that the owner gets it._

_Spitfire would love to be the one to help plan out every single prank from here on out, but she recognizes Irons' point that the kid's larger pranks must be of his own design in order for him to be a Prankster instead of just a trickster stealing our ideas._

_Irons would like to remind the owner that we will be here to bounce ideas off of and help tweak the owner's ideas to perfection for whatever prank he is trying for._

_Hawkeye will only participate in pranking the most worthy targets. Anyone who has not personally wronged the reader in a particularly large way will not even be considered by him._

Naruto blinked. Twice. He stared at the scroll with something akin to shock as his hand snuck towards another container of ramen. "Dude. Did Hawkeye just…stand up for me?" He raised an eyebrow. "Dude, guys – Hawkeye has a man-crush on me. Ew. So much ew," he said, giving a pantomimed gag. He took the opportunity to stuff more noodles into his open mouth. Beef.

_Sparky would like to say that they all __**have**__ to stand up for the owner in some way – mostly through pranking those who wrong the owner. Hawkeye-san simply raises the bar on who deserves it._

"Sparky, quit ruining my fun."

_Sparky apologizes for whatever he did now._

"Apology accepted. For now. Mmm, pork," Naruto mumbled through his newest mouthful. "Okay, let's see here…I'll only prank him if he's late again – the man needs to learn the lesson of being on time for events that he himself plans."

_Irons would like to know how much time must pass until he qualifies as 'late'._

"Well, he said around the time he first met with us – which was around nine – so anything after ten is fair game, I think." He chewed his ramen thoughtfully. "I have a few starting ideas, but they can't get off the ground without knowing what kind of place training ground…seven – was it? – is." He glanced at the scroll, where a few of them affirmed the training area number. "I'll need to go there after dinner and scope the place out."

_Sparky speaks for all the Pranksters when he wonders exactly what the owner has planned out._

"Come, now, Sparky," Naruto said with a mischievous grin. "What fun would I get to have if I just _told _you?"

* * *

There ya go, Laughing Phoenix. Happy? The Shinobi's Scroll can indeed be a map. And it will be able to show people on it, based on their chakra signatures. But that will come with time. Be patient.

If there are any spelling / grammar errors, or information errors (such as names/places/etc wrong), do try to tell me about it.

Not a whole lot to say about this chapter...Naruto is holding Kakashi's porn hostage - something that will become useful later, obviously, and no, there is no plan for me to have him read it and become a pervert - and Sasuke envies Naruto. This will be built on later. Not in the next chapter. Or the one after that. Maybe the one after that. But, anyway, envying Naruto. If you can't muddle through it and figger out why in the nineteen layers of hell Sasuke would ever envy Naruto, then you should...go...just go, really...

Likewise, Sasuke being obstinantly anti-dango will be built on later. That is going to be SO much fun to write. I need Anko to appear a little earlier, anyway.

I have one question: is it just me that, when Kakashi says "_I_ certainly didn't know that, at any rate", hears those words being voiced by Hugh Laurie as Gregory House? Because I do. And it's really kinda creepy to me.

Anyway, still not to the bell test. Not in the next chapter, either. Or the one after that. Maybe the one after that one, though. Maybe. Depends on what random shit I throw in between. No, in the next chapter, we get to see some of Naruto's labor pay off in the form of traps and shit strewn all over Training Ground Seven. And we get to see Iruka-sensei again!

Shino is a badass. He'll be turning up a lot. Tenten'll come in a few chapters - I got her planned out. Roughly. I'm thinking of making her a vital friend to Naruto, because seriously, who better to help prank people than someone who's accuracy is ten for ten (ha. ha. ha. oh, i kill myself.), or hundred for hundred? Yeah. It helps that she's awesome. And there will not be any romantic relations between her and Naruto, for those who just let out a shout for joy. No pairings in this story (I believe I've said this before). For those of you who are vying for a Naruto x Hinata fic, sorry. She'll show up a little, but nothing huge. She's been off my 'fave pairing' list for a while, now.

I've started writing future snippets, so I am now planning things out. We'll have to see if that leads to this story's demise, though - it usually does. Because I get so hung up on those future scenes that I try to connect them, with more planning and thinking and I can't just WRITE when I do that. So, I'll try and watch myself. There's nothing concrete, yet, so that's a good sign. It's mostly just one or two memo-book pages of scraps of conversation, stuff like that.

But I digress.

Toodles.


	4. Chapter 4

The Marauders _ a Naruto fanfiction by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

Chapter Four

* * *

He opened a heavy eyelid and looked blearily around the room. It was dark. That meant…

He winced as a sharp pain shot through his head.

That meant that…um…that it was night, or there were no windows. Or there _were_ windows, and they were covered.

He gave himself a mental pat on the back and sluggishly lifted his arms, moving them beneath him and pushing himself up into an almost-sitting position. He was on something squishy. A mattress? It could be a mattress.

He looked left, and he looked right.

Well, there was one spot to his left that could be a wall – assuming he was in a vertical position at this time – with a window, as it seemed a little bit lighter than the other surrounding darkness. So…a bedroom? That could make sense, with the mattress.

He swung his legs to his left and was pleased to find that they didn't slam into anything that could have caused him pain. He didn't really like pain. Pain usually hurt.

His head hurt. Damn.

He groped at nothing as he struggled to his feet, stumbling forward and nearly crashing into the could-be-a-wall-with-a-window.

Why the fuck did his head hurt so much?

His blind fingers touched the surface in front of him as he used it to balance, forcing his legs to stop shaking. It sure felt like it could be a wall. He traced his hands across the surface and they stopped on some sort of fabric.

His throat tightened involuntarily. He couldn't say he liked it, either. It hurt. Like his head.

He curled his hands around the fabric and yanked and yelled out, stumbling back, as sunlight burst into the room.

"Fuck!"

He tripped over something and he landed on the floor in a sprawling heap. His head rapped hard against the floor, and it throbbed even worse. It felt like…it felt like…dammit, he didn't even know what it felt like. It hurt, goddamit.

He slowly clambered back up to his feet, keeping his stinging eyes firmly shut and walking away from the source of light. He tried to remember what the hell he did last night, or the day before that. Or the day before that. He couldn't really recall. He was pretty sure of his name, though: Rooky Sushi, or something like that.

His throat constricted again, and he felt his way where he thought a toilet was. He didn't like the feeling that was rising in his chest. It felt like-

-oh.

_Oh._

He felt tiling against his hands and feet, and swore loudly when the toes of his right foot smashed into a large piece of porcelain. He pried open an eye and took a quick glimpse down.

Ah, the toilet.

His esophagus burned. His head throbbed. The back of his eyes stung.

He really should stop drinking so much.

Ryuji Suimin fell to his knees, leaned forward, and promptly threw up into his toilet.

At the same time, in the apartment across the hall, a man bearing a somewhat similar countenance to Team Sixteen's jounin-sensei was busy filling his mouth with rice. He rolled his eyes as the sounds accompanying the act of vomiting – loud grunts, groans, heaves, and the almost constant splashing of water, followed by numerous toilet flushes – reached his ears.

"Idiot," the man's brother muttered in between bites. "That's what you fucking get for going drinking with Mitarashi Anko, of all people." He scowled as he took another mouthful of rice. He really hated being so stingy with his money, sometimes. Rice got positively revolting after two weeks of nothing but. He glanced over at the clock sitting on the counter in front of him.

8:59.

With one of his chopsticks held between his teeth, he closed his eyes and growled out a curse, then another, and another, over and over again until it became a mantra of swearwords.

At precisely 9:00 am, the third floor of the Rising Sun Apartment Complex erupted in a cacophony of high-pitched moans, masculine grunts, and the repeated slapping of flesh against flesh.

The Ryuji bit clean through the wooden stick as he knocked his chair over and stepped to his door. Already, he could hear his neighbors running out of their rooms and yelling towards room 322. He opened his own door to join them. Sucking in a large breath, he erupted, growing louder with each word.

"Dammit, you one-eyed, _porn-reading_ _FUCKTARD! CHANGE YOUR GODDAMN ALARM!_"

* * *

Within the confines of the previously-mentioned room 322, and relatively safe from his hecklers, Hatake Kakashi lazily opened both eyes. He quickly – but just as lazily – shut Obito's.

He giggled – or chuckled; it was so hard to tell when they sounded almost exactly the same – as the recording of Icha Icha Paradise (the movie) continued playing as his morning alarm. It was at one of the best parts, too, he decided as he listened to the sound of the two women in a threesome being brought to simultaneous ecstasy.

Chuckle/giggle.

Definitely one of the best.

The Copycat Ninja calmly waited in his bed, smiling to himself with his hands pillowing the back of his head, until the ritualistic pounding-at-the-door began. Laughing quietly, he sat up and clambered out of his bed. In half a step, he was opening the door to a fairly pissed-off hoard of people.

"May I help you?"

"Alarm," came the throaty growl from a short, pudgy man in front. Kakashi idly thought that he looked a bit like Pakkun, one of his canine summons. He looked back into his home, as if he were only just now noticing the surround-sound sex coming from his apartment, before returning his gaze back to the Pakkun-man.

"Yes, what about it?" he asked cheerily.

"Turn. It. Off," Pakkun-man replied, his voice so low that it was almost _exactly_ like one of his other summons; not Pakkun, of course, but certainly like one of the bigger ones. Jidanbo, perhaps.

Kakashi shrugged.

"Okay," he agreed. Pakkun-man – as well as several of the crowd surrounding him – seemed rather confused at this, and didn't really know how to respond. Not that Kakashi could blame them for it; usually he nattered on for another ten, fifteen minutes about how it was unfair for them to ask him to turn it off, as it was really a delightful thing to wake up to, and how it was the one definite way to get anyone else who was still sleeping up out of bed – because if they stayed in bed, they couldn't run out of their apartments to scream at him, could they? – and how he had paid good money to get the movie on recording like this and they should really be more appreciative for everything he was doing for them and would they please stop being so rude, thank you very much, as he can't hear the moaning and squeaking over their shouting. Only after that giant headache did he randomly give in and turn his audio-porn off.

This new tactic completely threw the civilians in front of his home off track, so Kakashi winked merrily and shut the door in their stunned faces before turning around and switching off his alarm. He gave a wide yawn as he snagged his clothes from their place on his kitchen table and made his way towards his bathroom. He needed a shower.

* * *

Sakura ran excitedly towards the seventh sector of Konoha, where Kakashi – Kakashi-_sensei_, she reminded herself – had told them to meet. She couldn't wait to get there, because she was on Team Seven.

"With Sasuke-kun," she sang to herself, spinning around once without stopping her mad dash. She hoped Sasuke-kun was already there, waiting for everyone else – waiting for her – to show up. How wonderful would it be if she got there and he was the only one there, and they'd begin talking, and sharing secrets, and maybe then…

She sighed happily, smiling. Her mind slowly drifted out of dreamland and settled on more – okay, not _more_ – pressing issues.

She wondered what Kakashi-sensei wanted with them. He had said that it was 'one big thing' that they were doing today, but she couldn't for the life of her even begin to figure out what that could be. There were just too many possibilities: sparring session to test their skills? Race around Konoha (Sakura had heard Ino-pig loudly complaining about having to do that the prior evening)? Team up and fight their jounin-sensei? Was he going to show off some of his own jutsu, and styles? Impress them with his ability to still take command of various ANBU, even though he hadn't been a commander for almost six years (she had done research on Kakashi the prior evening)? Whatever it was, she wasn't looking forward to it. He had sent four different teams back to the Academy less than a week after they graduated, according to his records as a jounin-sensei, and she had a gut feeling that whatever caused him to do that was linked to this 'one big thing' that he had planned.

Her sandals clopped against fading red-painted wood as she crossed a bridge, nearing the sector training grounds. Her hand strayed to the pouch strapped to her leg, and she flicked it open and dipped a finger in. She ran her index finger over the sharp edges, mentally counting them and making sure she had a full set – ignoring the old shinobi idiom, 'don't count your kunai before they're thrown' – in case she had to use them today. She had them all. Good.

As she approached the small clearing in the forest where they were supposed to meet, she slowed to a sedate walk. She could very clearly see something large on the ground.

Sakura frowned. She doubted it was her sensei; she had deigned to leave her house by 8:30, so she could be a little early, and unless something drastic had happened to the man, it was unlikely that he would start showing up early. Besides, he didn't seem the type to go around lying on the grass while he waited.

As she got closer, she gathered that it was definitely a body. She could see feet, and a hand.

She gasped.

What if it was a dead body? What if it was a spy from Iwa, or Kiri, who had been killed when he got into Konoha?

Her stomach lurched. She didn't think she could handle the dead body of someone from an enemy nation. Scratch that; she didn't think she could handle a dead body, period.

There appeared to be a large scroll draped over where its face should be.

She walked faster, and it wasn't until she was a few meters away from the body that she recognized the color pants that the body was wearing: orange.

When her mind processed that information, she let out a feral growl.

Naruto.

How _dare_ he make her inadvertently worry about him like that?

She had just started advancing towards him, fists clenched and prepared to start swinging, when a question trickled into her thoughts. What exactly was he doing here, already at Training Ground Seven, his orange jacket missing, lying underneath a scroll? She mentally frowned and closed the distance between them.

The first thing she noticed when she stood next to him was the dirt, paint, tears, and small splotches of blood decorating the tough fabric that was the bottom half of his traditional uniform. The second was that he was missing one of his sandals, along with the sock from the same foot. The third was that one of his hands was clutching the scroll tightly, and the portion that was unrolled and fell over his face was completely blacked out with ink. Fourth was that, according to his rhythmic breathing, he was asleep. And the last thing she picked up on was not on her teammate, but rather on the area surrounding him: the grass was covered in deep ruts, holes were dug a hands-space deep, in some places the grass looked burnt, some looked torn up, and some spaces seemed to have just exploded upward based on the patterns the dirt around the created holes made.

Her brow furrowed slightly. Just what was he doing out here? Her eyes flicked to the trees surrounding the clearing, and narrowed slightly when she saw deep gouges, footprints, cracks, and burn marks peppering their bark.

Training?

She laughed loudly inside.

Naruto – training? That was, quite possibly, one of the _last_ things he would do.

So…he was just destroying the place they were going to use for their 'one big thing'? Why? What was the purpose?

Maybe there was no purpose, she said to herself. It would certainly fit Naruto – wrecking something, making it ugly, in a poor attempt to be funny.

"Sakura."

Her heart leapt to her throat and she quickly whirled around, putting all thoughts of the blonde-haired idiot out of her mind. At this moment, there was only-

"Sasuke-kun!" she smiled brightly, her cheeks reddening. Her crush looked her in the eye; she only blushed further. "How are you this morning?"

The Uchiha was silent for a minute before grunting out, "tired." He raised a dark eyebrow and she saw his eyes flicker over her shoulder, where Naruto was clearly visible. Sakura tried not to scream at the unfairness of it all; _she_ was the one talking to him, paying attention to him – _she _should be the one he was looking at! "Is the idiot sleeping?" He managed to say it as if it were a statement rather than a question.

"Yes, Sasuke-kun!" she replied, and then tried to steer the conversation away from the blonde. "I wasn't expecting you this early, Sasuke-kun."

He ignored her. "He was here before you?" Again, he managed to deliver it like he was saying it, and there was not a question mark at the end of that sentence, thank you very much.

Sakura mentally sighed and gave in. "Yes, Sasuke-kun," she said, a little subdued, but keeping a smile on her face and cheer in her voice. Sasuke grunted and walked around her. He reached Naruto, smirked, and lashed out with his leg, catching the Academy's dead-last in the ribs and flinging him back half a meter.

"Get up, dobe," the smug genin said as the newly-awakened genin let out a yelp of surprise and pain. Naruto was on his feet faster than one would have expected.

"Bastard," he spat, rubbing his side. He had dark shadows around his eyes, and dirt smudged across his cheek. His white undershirt – just where was his orange jacket? – was in roughly the same condition as his pants: cut up, dirtied, disgusting. His battered hitai-ate hung awkwardly from his neck, the leaf symbol barely visible through the smear of mud and what looked like ash. Walking forward, towards Sasuke, _past_ Sasuke, Naruto picked up the larger-than-normal scroll that had been formerly spread across his head and tapped the wooden hold. It flashed blue, and suddenly there was no more loose paper. "What're you guys doing here?" he asked with a yawn, running a hand through his hair.

"Sensei. Meeting. Training Ground Seven. Getting through to you yet, dobe?"

Naruto blinked. "Oh. Yeah." He grinned sheepishly. "That."

"You _forgot_?" Sakura hissed. Naruto jumped when he realized that she was there, his attention having been fixed on Sasuke for the last few moments.

"Oh, hey Sakura-chan," he said with a huge smile. "And it wasn't my fault! Honest!"

His pink-haired teammate just sighed irritably and shook her head before fixing him with a glare and saying, "What exactly were you doing here, Naruto?"

"Eh?"

"Your…clothes, your face…the training ground! You practically _destroyed _the entire place," she huffed. "What were you _doing_?"

Naruto's smile slid into a smirk. "Well…"

_Naruto had decided, while he was finishing up his dinner, that he was going to prank the hell out of Kakashi-sensei, no matter if he was late or not. He and the Pranksters had discussed the possibilities of the 'one big thing' for about an hour before deciding that it was most likely some test to check their skill levels; probably a three-on-one spar session, or something similar. When it turned to that point in the conversation, he decided that he'd just layer the place in tricks and traps to try and snare the jounin in the coming day._

_So, a little while later, he found himself crouching in the clearing of Training Ground Seven, lifting a kunai to a taught rope. Naruto cut the rope and watched as shuriken rocketed towards a log he had hung from a tree. One struck it, digging into the brown and white speckled wood, and sent it wheeling around, causing the other weapons to miss it entirely. "Dammit," the blonde cursed. The almighty power of the Log simply did not work when he wasn't in the middle of a battle! And he couldn't plan and set all these traps without a target to aim at, not with so many._

_On a small scale, in a smaller space? Absolutely, he could do it. He could approximate trajectories well enough with just a little thought, and that worked fine when you wanted someone to open their door and get hit in the face with a balloon full of paint. But with something that encompassed as huge an area as he was trying for here? Approximations wouldn't cut it. He wanted traps to set off traps, and for that he needed exact. He needed to know how one would react, how one's body would naturally move to avoid something flying at them and factor that information into his plan._

_He cut down the Log and let it fall to the earth. He sat down on it and adopted his 'thinking very hard' pose. He needed a real person to help him out, to move and get hit and point things out as he adjusted and adapted. Multiple people would be better, though. Things would go faster if he could have more people setting off traps simultaneously. But even so…it would be best to have himself be the one who was getting hit; he couldn't trust anyone's instincts and thoughts as much as he did his own. But he also needed to stay to the side and set and alter his traps while this was going on…_

"…_hmm…"_

_Two places at once…here and there…there and-_

"_-wow," he muttered, letting his face fall into his open palm. "Just…wow." Why the hell did it take him that long? Sure, it wasn't even a minute, but still, it certainly made him feel like the dead-last that he was. He sighed, shook his head, and stood up from the Log, his hands already moving into a cross formation, his chakra whirling around his fingers._

"_Kage Bunshin no Jutsu," he said loudly, grinning as he felt a slight pull on his chakra, once, twice, six times, and six identical bodies poofed into existence. They looked at him blearily, like they had just been woken up from a particularly good sleep, for a moment before their own lips turned upwards into smiles and their eyes lit up, already knowing exactly what he had called them for._

_Naruto jerked his head towards the treeline – go over there and start setting traps – and four of the clones grinned wider and ran off. He and the other two clones stayed where they were – wait here and act as live targets – absentmindedly rolling back and forth on the balls of their feet. He watched as the four snatched up his pack, squabbled over it for a moment, then disappeared into the forest with it._

_Naruto grinned. This was gonna be fun._

"…nothing. Why?"

Sakura glared at him, her hands clenching and unclenching in somewhat-repressed rage. "Naruto…"

"What? I was just having a bit of fun!" he said and took a few steps backwards, away from the pink-haired, easily-riled kunoichi.

"Dobe," came Sasuke's voice, interrupting them and dissipating the equal feelings of anger and anxiety. Naruto looked over at him and saw him toeing the scroll on the ground. "What's this?"

"That, Sasuke-kun-" The Uchiha glared at him "-is called a scroll. It's generally used to keep record of things one does not wish to forget, be it names, dates, or really awesome jutsu." Naruto picked it up and yanked out a short section of paper. "It's so awesome, in fact, that only I can see it." He showed Sasuke the censored paper. "See? 'Scroll of pure awesome' doesn't respond to 'Sissy pretty-boy Uchiha', so you can't see it."

"Don't talk about Sasuke-kun like that!"

Naruto yelled out "Oi!" and jerked back from the incoming fist. "Calm down, Sakura-chan!" He dropped to the ground to dodge the next swing, and rolled out of the way of the one immediately after. "Sissy pretty boy, can I have a little help here?" he yelled as he sprang to his feet and bent over backwards before spinning to the left, in order to avoid getting hit.

Sasuke scowled, but all the same, said, "Sakura." She stopped on a dime and turned towards her crush, all smiles. "We don't know what Kakashi-sensei is planning today; we might have to fight each other or together against him. We might need the dobe alive and relatively unharmed."

"Okay, Sasuke-kun," she agreed amiably, lowering her hands.

He sighed.

* * *

Ichiraku Ayame sighed to herself. Breakfast was usually so slow; no one wanted to go to an out-of-the-way ramen shop any time before noon – anyone besides Naruto, that is. If he could, that boy would eat every meal every day at Ichiraku's. If he could, it was quite possible that the boy would camp out across the street, so he could just walk a few meters and arrive at his haven if he were ever hungry. If he could, he would have been adopted by her father years ago.

She watched sandaled feet pass their stall from behind the paper curtain, tapping a nail against the counter in obvious boredom. "Dad," she called in a flat voice. A grunt sounded from the small supply room in the back. "Why do we open so early, again?"

"Because there's always at least one person who wakes up with a stomach for ramen, and we should always be open in time for those people to get their breakfast." Ayame made a noise of disagreement.

"Like who?" she challenged.

"Well," a familiar voice replied, causing her to look up, "like me, I suppose."

"Ah! Iruka-san!" This was a decent enough way to start the day, she decided, her complaints and drowsiness banished.

"Good morning, Ichiraku-san," Umino Iruka smiled. Ayame scowled at him. "Eh, Ayame-san," he corrected himself quickly. She sighed. The man was so difficult.

She smiled. "Good morning, Iruka-san. How are you today?"

"Can't complain. Too much, anyway," he finished with a roguish grin. He took a seat at the counter.

"You don't have school today?" Ayame asked, raising an eyebrow, and adding, "Order?"

"No," Iruka replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. "We get a few days off before the next class starts up, in order to meet the new students and the like. And one beef, please." The brown-haired woman nodded and bustled off to the side to gather ingredients, talking to him over her shoulder as she went.

"I haven't seen you in the mornings for a while now, Iruka-san. Too busy with school?"

"Pretty much," he said. "I get up early so I can review a few extra mission reports before I prepare for class; if I didn't go in early, I'd have to stay even longer at the Missions Office and would end up getting home around eight or nine every night instead of six or seven. I'd rather lose a little sleep than lose some of my free time."

"That sounds like you," Ayame grinned, throwing the noodles into a pot of boiling water. "Anything new?"

Iruka smiled a little at the ease of which he was able to talk to the ramen chef. She almost made him forget that he was talking to a teenager. He shook his head. "No, not really. I don't do much." He shrugged, embarrassed slightly, then bobbed his head to the side, thinking. "I got a new neighbor, loves cats a little too much."

"Not a cat person, Iruka?" Teuchi's voice asked, followed by a heavy thud.

"I like them better than dogs, I suppose," Iruka responded with another shrug. "I just don't find the idea of owning eighteen cats and still taking some off the street to be an attractive idea." He made a 'hmm'ing sound and continued. "Ran into Genma-san, almost got my eye poked out with that senbon he always chews on." He shook his head. "I swear, one of these days he's going to swallow wrong while that thing's in his mouth and slice open his esophagus."

Ayame winced. "Ouch."

"Quite. I've been told that I'm going to be participating in the Chuunin Exams this time around; I'm going to be a judge, or a greeter, or something, they didn't really give me specifics," the chuunin said. It was really strange for a teacher to get tapped for the Exams. "I'm meeting with the Kenara twins later, since they're going to be in my next class."

"Good kids?"

"_Great_ kids," Iruka corrected with a grin. Those two were already able to make bunshin, and their parents had said that they were reading about chuunin-level jutsu already. They certainly had ambition. And lastly…"Naruto got assigned to his genin team yesterday, with a near-incompetent sensei."

Ayame snorted with laughter as she cut up a small block of meat and dumped it into the pot.

"Well, incompetent at teaching, anyway," amended Iruka. It wouldn't do well to speak too ill of a jounin. "The man's a legend as a shinobi. He's just…eccentric."

With a laugh in her voice, the female Ichiraku said, "From what Naruto-kun told me yesterday, he's a little more than just eccentric. I was informed that Kakashi-san was an avid porn-reader with a deep-seeded desire to one day become a pirate." She allowed herself a breathy chuckle, smiling.

Iruka just laughed. "A pirate, huh?" He scratched at the scar across his nose as it crinkled up from his smile. "Yeah, I can see that.

"I suppose Naruto told you all of this the moment after he got his team, then?"

Ayame was silent for a moment, pursing her lips in thought, before smiling at him. "Well, _after_ he waited two hours for his sensei to show up, yes." She shook a small bowl of herbs and spices over the meal, and took the container off the fire. "Naruto-kun was never good with waiting, as you know-" The chuunin nodded with a knowing grin "-so after two hours had passed, he set up some sort of trap by the classroom door that would catch the poor guy when he entered." The grin vanished. "I don't really know how it worked – he didn't tell me that – but the end result was Kakashi-san being, and I quote, 'strung up like a piece of meat'."

"_What?_"

She chuckled as she set the instructor's order in front of him. "He didn't seem to like that very much, according to Naruto-kun, and apparently he's holding a bit of a grudge."

Iruka gaped like a fish. Naruto had…he…he attacked his _sensei_! After he specifically told the _entire_ class not to do that kind of thing! He had told them to act responsibly in front of their new leader, and the boy completely ignored that and, and – he…

He groaned.

Naruto hadn't been in the room when he'd said that. Of course. Great. Now he was going to act completely unreasonable towards Kakashi-san. Sure, the man definitely deserved such treatment – Iruka maybe harbored just a little grudge at the fact that the jounin couldn't turn in a thorough, or even legible, mission report to save his life – but after justice had been served…Naruto didn't know when to _stop._

"Ayame-san, I'm so sorry to cut this short after it's been so long since I've been able to stop by early like this, but can I get this to go, actually?" He had a former student and a jounin-sensei to yell at.

Ayame sighed, but grabbed a small box from behind the counter and tucked the bowl easily inside, put a lid on, and tied it shut. She twisted a pair of chopsticks under the twine to keep it tight and to give the customer something to eat with. "I suppose," she said as she placed the box in front of Iruka.

He gave her a lopsided grin and another apology. "I'll come back tomorrow morning, okay? I'll see you then, Ayame-san. Bye, Ichiraku-san!" he called towards the back. With that, he grabbed the box, graced the ramen chef with a short, respectful bow, and retreated from the shop.

Ayame sighed again as the paper curtain fluttered to a stop.

Back to boring.

* * *

"How long's it been?" Naruto whined loudly. He noticed that Sakura-chan reflexively curled her hands into tight fists at his question. Maybe he had said it a little too loudly. Or maybe he had asked that same question four times within the last three minutes. It was hard to ignore someone when they made their presence so blatantly obvious.

He shrugged.

Sakura was ignoring him, Sasuke was ignoring Sakura who was ignoring him, so it would all work out if he ignored Sasuke who was ignoring Sakura who was ignoring him, right?

He fingered the Shinobi's Scroll.

Right.

"So, what d'you guys think?"

_Spitfire thinks we should prank him._

A burst of laughter slipped from his lips at that – the exact same words she used the day before, when Kakashi was late! – and his teammates looked at him funny for a moment before proceeding to ignore him again. He chuckled quietly and looked back at the paper.

_Sparky agrees with Spitfire._

He raised an eyebrow; Sparky was usually all for the whole 'give him a chance, be reasonable, don't do that, blah blah blah' shtick. For him to be going along with 'fire without hesitation, he must be getting very annoyed.

_Irons agrees with Sparky-kun agreeing with Spitfire-san._

Naruto grinned. Irons had been a big help the previous night.

It seemed that each Prankster had their specialty in the fine art of pranking: Spitfire went with humiliating. Her favorites usually involved restraining someone in place while various objects hit and/or are dumped over them, or stealing someone's clothes and parading them around town. Graffiti was another (most common being her name, then insults against the more prominent figures of Konoha, then swearwords pasted on the homes of clan heads).

Sparky had done very little so far, but Naruto got the feeling that he only pranked when he got pissed; probably used them more to draw attention to himself then to punish people, which was a little boring, but understandable. Naruto had often done the same.

Hawkeye absolutely refused to reveal any of his pranking wisdom – something which made Naruto wonder why exactly he was on the scroll of 'prank masters', when he didn't even _try_ to prank anyone – and repeated that he would only tell his secrets when some grievous offense is perpetrated against 'the reader'.

Irons got his rocks off (irons off?) through things closer to the area of traps, and tactical set-ups, when he wasn't rigging pointless little Spitfire-like tricks. He had been the most useful for Kakashi's coming punishment; it had been a lot harder than normal, though, since Naruto had to describe everything, in detail, to the Prankster, in order to give him the information necessary for him to be able to help. So they had spent the better half of the night setting off traps, speaking quickly about trajectories, speed, wind resistance. He had pulled equations out of his non-existent ass, and when he fully explained them, patiently, Naruto had a new respect for the man. He would have definitely been a better teacher than Kakashi. When he told Irons that fact, he was silent a long time, before jotting a quick thanks and urging him to move to the next trap.

Thanks to Irons, the entirety of the seventh training ground was set up like a minefield. With mines that set off other mines, which set off other mines, which set off even more mines until escape was nigh-impossible.

All it would take to make the place a veritable hell was a small adjustment to one trap, just move its aim eighty-three centimeters to the left, and the domino effect would begin.

_Hawkeye thinks the others should have fun with that._

Prick.

"I'm wondering if this whole 'being late' thing is a habit, or just his way of trying to piss us off. Because if it's the second one, it's working very well." Naruto glanced over at Sakura. She wasn't paying complete attention to Sasuke, instead choosing to tear up large portions of grass around her and tap the ground with a white-knuckled fist. "Maybe too well." If Sakura-chan got it in her head that Kakashi was doing some unforgiveable act, nothing could save him from a beating of frightful proportions. Poor guy.

_Hawkeye certainly thinks that it's a habit._

_Irons hopes it's the latter._

_Spitfire don't give a shit! He's gonna get his fool ass pranked either way._

Wise words. Sparky's reply was noticeably absent. It came a minute later.

_Sparky recalls the owner saying that Kakashi-kun wore a hitai-ate over one eye. Sparky would like to know what else the owner knows about Kakashi-kun._

Man, Sparks and Kakashi must have been close, for him to think constantly about the guy. "Well, I don't know why he has the headband over his eye – maybe he's missing that eye, or there's a freaky scar on that side of his face or something. He wears an all-black set of pants and a black long-sleeved shirt, and the standard jounin-issue flak jacket over that. His ankles are taped up, but that could just as easily be fashion as it could be medical." He tapped his cheek. "He has fingerless black gloves on, with metal plates sewn on just below the knuckles and god_damn_ that would hurt like a bitch to get hit in the face with those. Other than that, it's what I told you before: mask over his neck, chin, mouth, and nose, beat-up old headband over one eye, and silver hair that's allergic to gravity," he finished, shrugging.

_Sparky would like to know about personality._

"Oh, um…he's late a lot," Naruto stalled as he thought. "He looks lazy as hell, doesn't speak up, doesn't even react when he's strung up like a piñata. Takes thing in stride. I can't say I know a lot about him, but…oh, hey! Hey, Sakura-chan!" The person in question turned towards him with murder in her eyes. Naruto ignored that completely and asked, "What do you know about Kakashi-sensei?"

"That he's going to be a quivering pile of _meat_ when I'm done with him," she hissed.

"That's obvious, Sakura-chan," he dismissed. "I mean, like, I'm sure that after we got our team, you went and looked this guy up in the library records or something, right?" Sakura gave a short, sharp nod. "Well, what did you find out?"

Sakura sent a fleeting glance at Sasuke-kun – ignored! – and sighed. She stood up and walked a meter towards Naruto before sitting down; still closer to her crush than to the blonde, so no misunderstandings could be made. Her hands fisted on the grass again. "Hatake Kakashi," she murmured in as much a monotone as she could muster, "A-rank shinobi, specializes in assassination missions, hasn't taken anything less than B-rank missions for over fifteen years. Known by his enemies by his more popular moniker, the Copycat Ninja, Kakashi has learned over one thousand different jutsu since his promotion to jounin alone. His genin team is unknown, as is his family history. The details were vague, but apparently he went to the Academy very young, graduated quickly, got to chuunin in under five years, and jounin in under five years after that." She gave a little shrug. "I didn't really get anything concrete on him; it was trying to research smoke. Everything important was either censored, or just completely absent from the books."

Naruto gave a humming noise. "Weird." He grinned. "Thanks, Sakura-chan!" He watched her nod, stand up, brush off the grass from her dress, and go back to sit over by the Uchiha. The prankster shot a look at the scroll in his hands. "How was that, Sparks?"

_Sparky is rather impressed with the owner's teammate's response; she sounds like a very smart young woman._

"That's Sakura-chan for you," he said with a quick smile. He didn't comment on Sparky's slight deflection; clearly he wanted to think about Kakashi by himself for now. If he wanted more clarification, or information, or just help brainstorming what could have happened to change the old Kakashi into this new one, Naruto trusted him to ask for it.

Naruto was just about to ask Spitfire if she wanted to prank Kakashi once he got here – she'd dissolve into a spitting fit if he did, swearing like a sailor and promising all sorts of pain on Kakashi-kun, which was just plain hilarious – when he heard voices and crunching coming from the treeline. With a practiced movement, the paper vanished into the scroll and he set it carefully behind him.

The voices got louder, and he slid a kunai out from its holster. A twang of wire, a colorful curse, and a thump of metal on wood sounded, followed by relative silence. The crunching started again, but slower. Whoever was barging through the forest was being more careful now, having accidentally activated one of his stand-alone traps.

A form burst through the brush and Naruto was throwing the knife before he realized who it was. It slammed into the tree directly beside the boy's head and he shrieked, lurching to the side and narrowly missing another one of his traps – the only thing that prevented a fate of silly-putty being plastered over his entire head were two sets of hands that firmly halted his progress towards the ground.

"Kiba!" Naruto shouted when he recognized the genin. "What the hell are you doing?"

"What the hell am _I _doing? What the hell are _you _doing?" the Inuzuka sputtered indignantly. "You could have killed me!"

"Oh, I would _not_ have killed you, no matter how easy that may be."

"Say _what_?" Kiba shook off his teammates. "You wanna say that again?" he asked, narrowing his eyes and advancing towards the blonde.

"Are you deaf as well as stupid? I said I could beat the living tar out of you with less effort than it takes you to take a shit," Naruto grinned. He was enjoying this. Oh, hey, there was the Hyuuga from his year, and Shino. The Aburame was kneeling where Kiba had almost fallen, presumably looking at the well-hidden (but completely obvious to him because he was Shino and he could do these kinds of things) trap. He looked up sharply, and Naruto saw him follow his head towards the estimated path that the silly-putty would take if it were set off.

"Oi, I'm right in front of you, dumbass! Look at me when you're acting like you've got a spine!"

Naruto did the opposite and kept his eyes on Shino, who was turning his head towards the next trap (how the hell did he know where they had all been hidden?), following the trajectory of that launcher to the next one, to the next, to the next. As he watched, he could make out Shino's eyebrows lift over his dark-tinted lenses. "Now, now, Kiba, there's no need to get angry. I can still smell you, you know, and that's bad enough. I don't need to see you as well."

Akamaru, Kiba's nin-dog, barked. "Wha-traitor!" Kiba whined.

"What are you three doing in our Training Ground," came Sasuke's voice. Eyes turned towards him. Kiba flinched slightly when he saw the glare being directed at him. He was just about to puff up his chest and try to get into a verbal sparring match with the Uchiha when a hesitant stammer spoke up.

"A-ano…" Hinata flushed when all eyes – save for Shino – settled on her. "We-we're c-conducting our official p-post-genin test, given to us by, um, by Kurenai-sensei…"

"Your sensei told you, for your test, to run into our meeting place and start squabbling like idiots with the idiot," Sasuke accused coldly.

"That would be an inaccurate statement, and an insulting assumption, Uchiha Sasuke." Shino had stood from his inspection of the treeline, and was now looking down at a patch of grass – a meter-by-half-meter patch of grass that just so happened to be fake, with a hole underneath filled with fish-oil and rotten eggs; that stink would stay on a person for days, no matter how much they wash themselves or their clothes. "No matter how unintelligent our colleagues may be." His gaze shifted to Naruto, and he was sure that the Aburame was staring quite intently at the Shinobi's Scroll. "We were assigned with the task of locating our sensei before midday. As a reconnaissance team, the ability to track down and capture a target is especially vital." He fully turned his body towards Sasuke. "It would be a safer course of action to not question our activities or our sensei's logic a second time."

Naruto blinked. Did…did Shino just ever-so-subtly threaten the Last Uchiha?

His lips stretched into a grin. Kick. _Ass_.

Sasuke just 'hnnned' and went back to ignoring everyone around him.

"Naruto."

Naruto jerked his head towards the voice. "Eh? Yeah? Um…yeah, what?" Aburame Shino walked over to him and stood directly in front of him. Naruto took one step back, a little unnerved.

Shino stared at him for a moment, and then he said quietly, "Number twenty-eight needs to be raised another seventeen centimeters if you want it to activate number thirty-four." He hesitated – something Naruto had never seen the boy do before and probably never would again – and seemed like he was about to continue, but he gave himself a small – small being a general word for it; miniscule, or infinitesimal, would be more accurate – shake of his head. Instead, he did a sharp one-eighty and calmly walked away. "Kiba, Hinata."

And they were gone.

Naruto blinked, and thought. He thought about the Aburame's reaction to the traps. He thought about his exceptional observational skills. He thought about his clear dislike for Kiba, Sasuke, and a number of other people. Naruto thought that someone like that might be very valuable to a budding prank master such as himself; after all, it wasn't like _he_ could have taken one look around the training ground and declare which traps – in the correct order, no less – needed to be moved to reach the final result he was striving for.

He decided that he would ponder Shino and his abilities later. Right now, he had a team to bother.

Naruto turned back to his teammates, only to see them in roughly the same position they were before Team 8 showed up.

Scratch the team-bothering, then. The Pranksters were more interesting, anyway.

He sighed, and was about to open his scroll back up when he heard something out of place: tree branches creaking as something hit them, and leaves slapping against the same something as it moved through the trees. Naruto dropped low to the ground, prepared to dive towards Sakura-chan and Sasuke, grab his scroll, jump at whoever appeared, or just hightail it out of there.

His nose twitched.

He knew that smell. He relaxed slightly. And then tensed right back up.

A final creak of the trees, and he felt something slam into the ground behind him.

He damn sure well knew what that was.

"Naruto."

He hated being right.

Naruto spun around, a grin pasted on his face, his hand already scratching the back of his head in a practiced embarrassed gesture. "Eh heh heh heh! Uh, hi, Iruka-sensei! What's up?"

* * *

Kakashi whistled tonelessly as he slipped his flak jacket over his outfit, straightening his mask after it was on. He took a quick inventory: mask, hitai-ate, jacket, underwear, sandals, clothing, brand-new Icha Icha Paradise, gloves, and a shuriken/kunai pouch. With shuriken and kunai.

Check, check, check – he paused and took a look, and yes, they were black with white stripes today – check – he slipped on his sandals – check, check – the hardcover edition was much more fulfilling then the paperback that the little blonde brat had stolen; it could take more of a, heh heh, _beating_ – check, check, check, and check.

Excellent.

He poked his head out the door and was pleased to find a very obvious lack of a crowd. Smiling to himself, he stepped into the hall and locked his door and, with all the stealth of a civilian, walked down the stairs and out of the apartment complex. He managed to make it to the fruit vendor, about ten paces away from the apartment door, without incident.

From what the fruit vendor said happened, 'that damned porn-reading ninja' had been doing what he does best and didn't notice the small child running down the street until he slammed directly into his side – which was fairly impressive, the vendor had to admit, since the ninja was, like, almost two meters tall. The ninja was forced to the right and collided fairly hard with vendor's stand, causing various citrus to go spilling onto the dirt road. The ninja apologized, bought a few that had fallen, and went on his way.

Kakashi's point of view was radically different, be it because he just had a very twisted, skewed version of reality that he lived in, or because he was under the influence of a number of different drugs 24/7. No one really knew which. Could be both. Either way, his story was a little different, involving several low-tier demons attempting to steal his Icha Icha, bombs shaped suspiciously like pears and apples, a full-scale battle wherein he buried the demons beneath a kart full of fruit that happened to be sitting nearby for some odd reason, and getting heralded as a hero for his efforts and rewarded with several of the fruit-bombs as thanks from his adoring public.

See the slight contradiction in storytelling?

Whichever story was the truth was, in the grand scheme of things, fairly unimportant, as the only thing that really mattered was where Kakashi wound up in the end: standing in front of the KIA Memorial on the outskirts of Training Ground Seven. Also known as 'a small clearing approximately one kilometer away from where he was supposed to be more than an hour ago, where his three maybe could be students waited not-so-patiently for his arrival'.

* * *

Naruto knew when he was screwed. He knew he was screwed like no one else knew.

He knew he was screwed when he glued every table and chair to the classroom ceiling and bastard fake-sensei Mizuki caught him just as he was finishing up. He knew he was screwed when Sakura-chan turned towards him with her fists clenched real tight. He knew he was screwed when he didn't have any money left to buy food until the beginning of the next month – more than a week away. And he especially knew he was screwed when Mitarashi Anko found out that it was him that had completely cleaned out every store in Konohagakure of dango.

Yes, Naruto had a pretty good idea of when he was truly and utterly screwed. If asked at that very moment, if he thought he was screwed, he would answer with a definite – if not firm – 'yes'.

So Naruto looked up at the face of his favorite person in Konoha with no small amount of impending dread, and Iruka looked down at his favorite genin – and if he were forced to admit it, yes, favorite person as well – with no small amount of disappointment, anger, and pride. Although he did hide the pride very well. Very, very, very well.

"Eh heh heh heh! Uh, hi, Iruka-sensei! What's up?" Naruto laughed nervously, rubbing his neck in anxiety as his mind frantically thought of a way to get the _hell_ out. His eyes, nearly closed as they were, darted around for an escape, a distraction, _something._

"Naruto, you-"

"HOLYCRAPWHATTHEHELLISTHAT!" The twelve-year-old in question screamed and thrust a finger past Iruka. Without bothering to see if his genius ruse worked – as it more than likely did not, although he was not about to admit it – Naruto ran. A more accurate description would be 'scampered like a rabbit trying to escape a particularly hungry wolf', but Naruto refused to see it that way. Ninja didn't 'scamper'.

Either way, our hero found himself racing through the trees, unable to use chakra to stabilize himself on top of the branches (not having learned such a technique at this time) but doing a decent job overall of not falling and hurting himself. Iruka would have been impressed if he weren't out for the boy's blood.

"NARUTO!"

"Oh shit, oh shit, ohshitohshitoshit!" the boy in question swore, the same word tumbling off of his tongue as he slammed onto another branch before launching off to the next one.

This was easily scarier than when he filched the Forbidden Scroll and got attacked by bastard fake-sensei Mizuki. Because he wasn't facing bastard fake-sensei Mizuki. He was facing angry real-sensei Iruka, who was at least 3.25 times scarier when he was angry than BFS (bastard fake-sensei) Mizuki was.

He heard several twangs of wire and almost missed the next branch when he heard a yell behind him. He couldn't help but feel a small bit of dread – which trap was activated? Number forty-one – Kunai Storm? Number thirteen – Orange and Golden Shower? Number twenty-seven – Wrath of the Log?

"NARUTO! IS THIS PAINT MIXED WITH _GLUE_?"

Number thirteen then. Back to the chase.

* * *

Kakashi hummed quietly to himself as he stared down at the list of fallen shinobi.

He came here for lots of different reasons: sometimes to pay respect to his lost friends, sometimes to pay respect to his lost comrades – whether he knew them or not. Sometimes he came to talk with Obito, sometimes with his old sensei. Sometimes he just came to think of well-intentioned things – of his life, of Konoha, of that adorable new librarian – and sometimes he came to think of not-so-well-intentioned things – of his life, of the next Icha Icha movie, of the newest lie for why he was late again. Sometimes he came with offerings – an old Icha Icha, some flowers, an apple for Obito – and sometimes he just sat with his back against the side of the stone, empty handed.

What Kakashi was doing now was the last option of the 'not-so-well-intentioned' category.

"What would Obito have said?" he mused to himself.

"_I'm sorry I'm late, but I tripped over a cat and had to take it to the vet."_

Used it the day before yesterday.

"_I'm sorry I'm late, but I tripped over a dog and had to take it to the Inuzuka's."_

Used it the day before the day before yesterday.

"_I'm sorry I'm late, but I got dust in my eye and I got lost since I couldn't see."_

No, the dust excuse was one of Obito's most common, his and his alone. Kakashi had yet to use that one, and he doubted he ever would.

"_I'm sorry I'm late, but I spilled the salt when I was eating breakfast this morning and was afraid to go anywhere for the better part of the morning."_

Decent, but lacking…oomph.

"_I'm sorry I'm late, but I had to stop a horrid war between the apples and the pears this morning, and being completely covered in pulp and juice afterwards, I went back home to take a shower."_

Genius! And it even had a small amount of truth in it – granted, it was a very, _very_ small amount of truth, but truth it was – and that was something he had always tried hard to maintain. After all, he most certainly did stumble over a large number of apples and pears after fighting off the demons in front of his apartment, and he did accidentally step on one of the apples and got the fruit mush on his sandal.

Kakashi nodded to himself, fairly satisfied with his newest explanation.

Now…how much longer should he keep his soon-to-not-be team waiting?

He hummed to himself again.

Noon sounded good. It was only…two hours away. Practically nothing.

Just as his thoughts – and his fingers – were drifting towards his favorite thing in the entire world, located thusly inside the front pocket of his flak jacket, Hatake Kakashi became distinctly aware of yells, the snapping of branches, and what sounded like the high-pitched squealing of a swine. He let his hand drop, and instead turned with a small amount of curiosity towards where the noises were coming from.

They got louder, and Kakashi realized there were words attached to the yelling, and the tortured pig sound was actually girlish screaming – also with words being used. His eyes widened precipitously – only one of them being visible to note the change – when he further realized that he recognized the voice that was screaming like a little girl.

He could only watch in fear and morbid curiosity as a small figure clad in eye-catching orange exploded from the foliage, almost immediately followed by a like-colored blur.

* * *

"Oh shit, shit, SHIT!" Naruto yelled from his arc in the air. He looked back as he hit the peak of his jump and swore again when he saw that his former teacher was headed straight for him. He flapped his arms wildly and looked around – there had to be something to use to get out of this! – and caught sight of a flash of silver from the ground. He looked closer, his heart pounding hard in his chest, reminding him that he had a very angry, very dangerous person on a collision course with himself, and let out a scream of frustration as he recognized the individual. "KAKASHI-SENS-AAUGH!"

The significantly heavier body of the significantly paint-covered Umino Iruka slammed into Naruto's, eliciting another loud curse from the blonde as soon as he got his breath back, changing his direction slightly and sending them both on a direct path to the Copycat Ninja.

Naruto could only squeeze his eyes shut as Iruka-sensei got a few choice shouts in before he, too, realized what was happening and imitated his former student as they both careened towards their unintentional target.

* * *

Kakashi swore.

* * *

Okay, so there's the first look at my OC team - Team 16's jounin-sensei, Ryuji Suimin, the puking guy in the start. Team 16 snippets will be frequently slipped in throughout my story, so if you're staunchly against OC interaction, you can skip over those. Unlike before I went through the whole story and re-edited things, however, now those OC snippets actually have bearing on the overall plot, and the OC characters now actually interact with the main characters. It's a change for the better, believe me.

Ja ne.


	5. Chapter 5

The Marauders _ a Naruto fanfiction by 30CK ~troutpeoples

Chapter Five

* * *

Hatake Kakashi decided that, after an entire minute of deep and serious contemplation, being hit by a combined mass of over ninety kilograms and slammed into a block of solid granite tended to hurt. And suck. It hurt a lot and it sucked even more. And he was pretty sure he had at least four names of Konoha's KIA imprinted on his face.

He groaned. It came out more like a strangled gurgle.

This was certainly a bad situation to be in. For one, he couldn't feel his legs, and someone's very bony elbow was jutting into his eye socket. Also, one of those someones was his could-be student, the Hated One; he had gleaned that much from the orange that he saw before the collision. The fact that one of his could-be students had found him, and knew where he was, and knew that he really had no good excuse – as far as they knew, of course; Kakashi thought that the excuse he came up with a few moments ago was rather brilliant – to not be where they had been for the last hour. So, not only was he privy to a very loud and very annoying rant from Naruto about his incompetence as a teacher, but if he was right about the identity of the other person, he would also be able to watch and probably get caught in the middle of a very firm lecture.

He hated lectures.

He heard someone swear, and he couldn't help but agree. Then he heard that same someone growl his name, and he didn't feel like agreeing anymore.

"Fucking hell…" a cough "Dammit...Kakashi-sensei..." The elbow extracted itself from his eye socket and a body thumped against the dirt. "You coulda…fucking moved, ya know..."

That was true. He could have. But one's body tends to ignore orders when the situation presented is not life-threatening, and merely pain-inducing. Not a reaction that made a huge amount of sense, but hey, neither did a lot of things in anime.

"Na-_ru_-_**to**_…" the other someone ground out.

"Umino, would you please – ow, _ow_ – get _off_ me before you lecture your former student?" Kakashi said in what he hoped was a normal tone. A sharp knee pressed firmly into his side in answer.

"Absolutely, Kakashi-san," Iruka replied congenially. The knee was drawn away and he felt a large amount of weight remove itself from on top of him.

"Thank you." Kakashi untangled his limbs from themselves and fell backwards. He grunted when his head hit a particularly hard-packed section of dirt. Almost scowling, he opened an eye and looked down at himself. He was not pleased to see orange and gold smeared across his front, presumably paint mixed with some other sticky substance.

He gave a mental sigh of sadness, thinking of how much money it was going to take to get them back to normal. Sure, it wasn't like he was going to spend his _own_ money on it, but the fact remained.

He groaned once again as he rolled himself over, raising himself up onto his not-so-stable legs, just as the Academy teacher began his rant. Joy.

A deep breath, a squaring of the shoulders, a scowl carved on his lips, and Iruka was shouting once again. It was some teacher thing, Kakashi decided, where they had to yell at anyone younger than them if they did anything that was wrong in their eyes. Kakashi knew that, had he not been directly involved in anything the orange-clad hellspawn devised, he would have found the traps and pranks rather amusing. But since he had been caught in the middle of two of them so far, and was destined to be caught in the middle of many, many more, he found them almost the exact opposite of amusing. Annoying, irritating, grating, exhausting…the list could go on.

In the end, the Copycat Ninja could only mentally shrug off his thoughts and smile as he tuned into the asshole-ripping rant directed at his maybe could be student.

"-know that you weren't there to hear me say it but it should go _without saying_ that it is very bad form, not to mention just plain rotten, to pull a prank on a man when he hasn't even accepted you as students yet! If Kakashi-san didn't have such a good sense of humor-"

"-oh, he doesn't _have_ a sense of humor, Iruka-sensei, he just doesn't give a sh-"

"-don't you _dare _swear in front of me, Naruto, and he does too care! Anyone would care if they found themselves in the position that you put him in, it's just that people have different ways of reacting to things! He acted like he didn't care because that's how he always acts! It's going to take a lot more than that to get a reaction out of him!"

"So you're telling me to try harder?"

"NO! I'm telling you not to try at all! Don't aggravate your elders, _especially_ your teachers!"

"But Iruka-senseeeiiii-"

"No!"

"-if I hadn't aggravated you to the brink of insanity when _you_ were my sensei, we would have never gotten as close as we are now!"

"He has a point," Kakashi put in.

"You stay out of this!" Iruka yelled at him. Kakashi held up his hands in silent surrender. He rounded back on Naruto. "And even if that were true, it wouldn't give you permission _or_ the right to do that to anyone else! I was your teacher in a school, so the consequences are much less serious, but if you prank your sensei as a full-fledged shinobi, dire results could be produced! He could hate you and leave you to die on a mission if he so felt it!"

"He wouldn't do that, Kakashi-kun loves me!" A fist crashed into the top of his head.

"He's Kakashi_-sensei_ to you; what did I say about respect?"

"You didn't, you just said I shouldn't aggravate my teachers."

"Then I'm saying it now! Respect your sensei!"

"I _do_ respect my sensei!"

"Slinging him up in the air by three of his four limbs and hitting him with chalk-dust-filled erasers while he can't move certainly doesn't convey that respect!"

"He took my Icha Icha, too," Kakashi added helpfully.

Iruka sputtered unintelligibly for a few moments before turning his eyes to his former student, gritting his teeth and breath hard through his nose in an effort to calm down. It wasn't working. "And _what_ were you going to do with _that?_" he growled.

Naruto let out a squeak of fear.

* * *

Ryuji Suimin trudged slowly up the stairs, taking careful measures not to step too hard or move too much. He kept one hand at his temple, rubbing firmly and more often than not almost dislodging his sunglasses, and the other trailing beside him against the wall. He wondered how many more steps it would take to get to the Missions Office, and congratulated himself on making his way halfway through the building with his eyes firmly shut.

"SENSEI!"

His eyes snapped open and he let out a yell, and if anyone in the immediate vicinity claimed that it sounded like the shriek of a six-year-old girl, well…they would be right. But Suimin wasn't about to admit that. Ever.

Directly next to his face was another face, a younger face, a younger face of one of his genin. At his scream (little-girl shriek), the face screamed right back – sounding a lot less girly than his own despite the younger face of one of his genin being owned by one of his _female_ genin; the fact that his scream was more feminine than a female's scream was a black mark against him – and Suimin jerked back away from it, pain already shooting behind his eyes and inside his head. He yelled again as his arms windmilled for a moment before he fell backwards.

Yoro Yumi and Muriki Ryoko grinned at each other as their jounin-sensei began to tumble down three flights of stairs.

"Is…is he gonna be okay?" a male voice, timid and small, asked from behind them. The two girls turned to their teammate, Sakiten Takato, and their grins were wiped off their faces. They watched the boy, who was about two years younger than the both of them, fidget beneath their gazes and look anxiously past them, down the stairs in fretful concern. His light brown hair hooded over his eyes, barely letting the intense green of his irises be seen.

"You're so cuuuuute!" Yumi cried, throwing herself at him, wrapping her arms around his head and shoving his face into her newly-developing bust. Her own long brown hair curtained them both from the outside world as she snuggled him close, rubbing her cheek against his scalp and giggling when his hair tickled her nose. She hummed happily when the boy let out a squeak of embarrassment.

"Don't you remember what happened the last time you did that, Yumi?" Ryoko asked in a bored tone. The brunette lifted her head, gently resting her chin against the top of Takato's scalp – and giving him a wonderful view down her shirt, should he choose to look…which she really hoped he took the opportunity to do – to look at her teammate. She pursed her lips in thought before letting a sweet smile spread them.

"Takato-kun passed out!" she said proudly. Then she blinked and let a little pout mar her features. "Sorry, Takato-kun," she whispered into his ear, before nuzzling his forehead again.

Ryoko nodded. "Good. Now, do you know why he passed out?"

"Allergic reaction," came the reply without hesitation.

Blink.

"Allergic…?" She shook her head. Yes, because that made sense. Good lord – Yumi was a good girl and all, shotacon aside, but she really needed to live a little more in _reality_. Next thing, she'd be spinning a leek and singing nonsense. Poor girl. "Okay, sure. Allergic reaction. Whatever."

Yumi beamed.

Shortly after, her attention waned and she was cuddling her male (child) teammate once more. Her fingers were sifting through his hair and occasionally tracing around the edges of his ears. She noticed that he shuddered whenever she did that, and barely contained a squeal as she did it again and again and again. She gently tilted his head back and placed her face right down to his, so their noses were touching. Yumi scrunched hers up and giggled; it tickled. Looking fondly into his leaf-green eyes, she asked quietly, "Have I told you that I love you, Takato-kun?"

Takato let out a strangled squeak, like a trapped mouse.

"Not in the past half-hour, Yumi," Ryoko spoke up, shaking her head at the spectacle.

Yumi giggled again, locking her eyes back with his, and whispered, her voice almost a purr, "I _love_ you, Takato-kuuuun…"

If he was red before, Takato was now forging a path towards joining the community of tomatoes in his fridge. He was blushing up a storm and making "um, ahm, uh" noises, stuttering and unable to form a simple word. Yumi thought it was simply adorable. So she smushed him back against her chest.

Ryoko only watched as the bashful boy's body grew limper with each passing minute as the other female talked softly into his ear, until the only thing holding him up anymore were Yumi's pale arms around his head. She decided that it was about time to say something, before the boy died. "Yumi," she said. "I do believe that he lost consciousness."

"Nonsense!" the brunette cried, her ink-black eye looking at Ryoko through her hair. "He can't have lost consciousness – I haven't even gotten to telling him about the part where I take his pants off, yet!" She squeezed him tighter into her bosom.

Ryoko felt her eye twitch.

"He's not moving," she pointed out.

"That's because he's completely enraptured in my detailed accounts of future events," Yumi replied firmly, with utmost confidence in her answer. Her hand slid down from his head and began to rub slowly against the boy's neck.

"You do know, Yumi, that it really isn't nice to scream into the ear of someone with a monster hangover, right?" a pained voice said from behind. Ryoko looked back at their jounin-sensei with a smirk.

"Shhhhhhhhhhhh!" Yumi shushed, glaring daggers at the spectacled man. Suimin sighed.

"Sensei, Yumi's strangling Takato again."

"Nuh-uh!"

"Yuh-huh."

"Nuh-uh!"

"Yuh-huh." Ryoko ignored the retaliatory 'nuh-uh' and turned to her sensei. "Maybe you shouldn't drink so much, then, sensei." Suimin gave a 'pssh', and a blasé wave of his hand, before turning to the two members of his team locked in an embrace.

"Yumi…" he warned, wincing slightly.

"Nuh-uh!"

He sighed and looked back at Ryoko. "Can I just give up now?" She shook her head. "Can I just leave?" She shook her head again. He sighed. "Was she telling dirty fantasies to him before or after her breasts rendered him unconscious?"

"After."

"Uh-huh," Suimin muttered to himself in contemplation.

"Nuh-uh!"

"Not talking to you, Yumi."

"Oh." The brunette pouted and slipped her hand down the neck of Takato's shirt, tracing her fingers against the sharp shoulder blades. She wondered how a boy could have such soft skin; it was softer than hers! That was weird. Weird…but she liked it. She liked everything about Takato-kun, you know. Yumi licked her lips, her pout having lifted into a predatory grin. "Takato-kuuuuun," she purred, flushing pink. Her short nails twirled lazy circles over his bony spine. "Can I take you home with me tonight?"

There was no answer from Takato-kun; mostly because unconscious people don't usually talk. Naturally, the airy little kunoichi took this as a 'yes please. I would love to follow you to your domain where I would undoubtedly be used in the forty-something fantasies your shota-mind has dreamed up in the past two days'.

Yumi grinned and gave him an extra squeeze. "Thank you!" She turned to the remainder of her team. "Takato-kun is going to come home with me tonight!" she told them happily. Her sensei shook his head.

"No, Yumi, he's not."

"But – but sensei!" she whined, her hand clutching at the warm flesh of her teammate's back. "He said he would!" She gave Suimin a pleading look. Complete with quivering lip.

"No, Yumi, he didn't."

"Yes, he did!"

"No, he didn't."

"Yes!"

"No."

"Yes!"

"No."

"Oh, god," Ryoko moaned, putting a palm to her head.

"Yes!"

"Yumi," Suimin said warningly. He stopped for a second before deciding that he couldn't, in fact, convince the girl that no answer did not mean 'yes', or that an unconscious target is not, no matter what other people say, a willing target, or that rape is not surprise sex and therefore a perfectly acceptable activity. So he shrugged and continued with, "Remove your hand from his shirt, please, and let him go." It was, almost literally, the very least he could do for the boy.

Her pleading, adorable pout only grew, but when he refused to be moved, she made a little whining noise in the back of her throat and withdrew her hand. She ran it once through his hair before letting him out of her cuddle-hug.

She sighed wistfully.

Takato fell to the floor.

Unfortunately for him, they had not moved from where they had been standing, and so the floor was actually the stairs. Suimin winced. He had very real, very recent experience falling down stairs; he could sympathize.

Ouch – were arms supposed to bend that way?

* * *

"Give. It. Here."

"Why should I give it to you?" Naruto asked stubbornly.

"Three reasons," replied Iruka, holding up one finger. "Number one: that is a novel for adults. You are twelve years old – not an adult. Ergo, you should not have it."

"We're legally adults in the eyes of Konoha law once we get our headbands!" Naruto argued back.

"He has a point."

"_What_ did I tell you earlier, Kakashi?"

"You told me to stay out of this," Kakashi replied in his 'oh-hum, how boring' voice.

"Exactly. So _stay out of this_."

Kakashi shrugged, but kept silent.

Two fingers, now. "Number two: you took that from your sensei. Took something that isn't yours without permission from the owner. That is considered stealing. Stealing is against the law."

"Stealing is an essential talent for a shinobi," Naruto shot back with more confidence then he felt.

"Point."

"_Ka-ka-__**shi**__._"

"Right, right." He made a zippering motion over where his lips probably where, and mimed throwing away a key.

"And number three-" Iruka held up three fingers "-is that it is _porn_o_graphy_."

"With a plot!" Naruto added.

Kakashi beamed.

"I don't care what else it is!" Iruka yelled. "It's porn!"

"What's wrong with that?"

"It's a disgusting, depraved book, and I will not allow you to keep it!"

"Why not?"

"Because it's disgusting and depraved!"

"So is torture, but we do that."

"Torture is obscenely different from pornography!"

"Would you forbid me from becoming a member of the T&I Department?"

"Well," Iruka faltered. "I couldn't forbid it, no, but I would try to talk you out of-"

"So why would you forbid me from porn? It's part of growing up!"

"It is." As well as getting up, sometimes.

"Shut up, Kakashi."

"Of course."

"Thank you." Iruka sighed heavily, kneading his temples. "Naruto…give it back to your jounin-sensei."

"_Maybe could be_ jounin-sensei," corrected the maybe could be jounin-sensei. Iruka frowned at him.

"Give it back to your _jounin-sensei_."

"I don't have a jounin-sensei, yet."

"_Naruto_," growled the teacher dangerously.

"What? Ask Kakashi!"

"No, I'm not going to ask Kakashi."

"Why not?" the Hatake in question questioned.

"Because you'll just agree with him; shut up."

"How do you know that?" Kakashi pressed.

"Because you're enjoying this. Shut up."

"I'm wounded, Umino-san!"

"No you're not, you – where the hell did Naruto go?"

Kakashi shrugged and smiled. "He ran off." He pointed to the left, a vague direction towards where he was supposed to be meeting his maybe could be team. "That way."

Iruka disappeared with a growl of frustration. And with Naruto gone, the jounin was all by his lonesome. He looked down at his paint/something-smeared clothes and sighed.

Well, at least it'd give him another excuse to be late.

* * *

Hiyoshi Iwazaru was not one of the most popular chuunin in the ranks of Konoha's military forces. Some speculated that it was due to the tough and unmoving fortitude he had kept hold of after the war with Iwa, and that his stubborn attitude and scathing cynicism drove anyone close to him far, far away. Some were unyielding in their opinions that he was just an asshole by birth, and the extremely short time that he held the position of tokubetsu jounin before getting kicked back down to chuunin for lack of respect only reaffirmed that fact. And others, the definite minority, said that he was actually a nice guy, and that he just got a bad rap because his name, in fact, contained the word 'Iwa' in it; subliminal hatred, some said.

Whatever the reason, Iwazaru seemed an unmovable rock in the dense, forest-like shinobi population.

At least, that's what some people said; because Iwazaru, no matter how wont he was to admit it, knew that he was very _very_ much not quite unmovable. There were four people who could get into and under his skin within the walls of the Hidden Leaf Village, sans the Hokage, and three of them had ties to the Konoha division of Torture and Interrogation.

Strangely, it was the one who _hadn't _taken a stint at T & I that scared him the most.

He knew of people who told their children stories in order to scare them, and warn them away from the bad things in life; stories about the devil getting you if you sinned, about boogeymen who stole you out of your bed, and monsters hidden in your closet that ate you if you went to sleep.

If he ever had children, he'd tell them stories about Goubatsu Maemi.

Goubatsu hadn't been a Konoha ninja until after the War, and there was some heavy speculation that she was a defector from Iwa; three jounin and one chuunin all swear to seeing her on the battlefield, laughing as she used unknown Earth jutsu to flay Konoha ninja's skin straight from their bones. Of course, all four of those 'witnesses' were constricted to the Psych Ward at Konoha General Hospital, and their claims could not be substantiated. But that only added to the fear-factor that was caused by the violent-tempered kunoichi.

He'd heard she'd been a blonde once, hair straight and soft and fair; rumor had it that all the blood she'd spilled had turned it into the craggled, knotted, rust-red mess that it was today.

He'd heard she'd been a jounin-sensei at one time, but her entire team – and the entire clan that had hired them for a mission – had died under mysterious circumstances. He'd heard she'd been seen laughing later that day, still caked in blood she hadn't bothered washing off.

He'd heard that she spent her days off watching captured foreign shinobi, watching them twist and turn on each other and submit to the 'kill or be killed' mentality of prison, like one would their favorite television show; it was said that she brought popcorn.

He'd heard that she had been married once, only to have brutally beaten her husband to death a year later; it was said that she still wore the rusted wedding ring on her left hand, said to still contain minute traces of her late hubby's face.

He'd heard that she and Mitarashi Anko held a brief, but passionate, relationship – something that was too mind-scarringly scary to properly put into words.

He'd heard that there were fifteen different petitions and requests to evict her from the military forces of Konoha and place her in prison for her crimes, and all had been denied due to the fact that she held some amount of sway with the Hokage; whether or not it was some sort of immunity for giving information on Iwa in the war or a form of blackmail over the Sarutobi family was unclear, if even feasible.

Iwazaru heard all these things, and he believed them.

Nothing made him believe them more than when she was looking straight at him, her silver eyes piercing him stronger and deeper than any kunai or sword ever could.

Like she was now.

Iwazaru spent two days a week in the Missions Office on the 0600 to 1200 shift. It was just his luck that the devil-womanhad to come back from a mission during _his_ shift. And she couldn't report in to Kateshi, or Tensai, or Kotetsu – no, she had to come to _his _line.

He swallowed nervously and studiously avoided eye-contact and attempted to keep his voice from shaking uncontrollably when he said in greeting, "Goubatsu-san."

"Iwa," she said in return, her voice like gravel. She cleared her throat and gave a sick-sounding cough before semi-formally reporting, "Goubatsu Maemi, jounin of Konoha, reporting in on A-rank mission from the Land of Waterfalls, completed just fuckin' peachy." She drew a scroll out from a pouch on her upper arm and threw it at the terrified chuunin's face. He barely managed to catch it, shaking badly as he was.

Iwazaru chose to peruse the mission scroll's contents for several minutes before saying quietly, "I-is there something wrong with your time stamps, Goubatsu-san?"

He didn't have to look up to know her eyes were smoldering in their sockets, didn't have to feel for her chakra to know of the bloodlust that lay humming there just barely under control. "The _fuck_ are you trying to say?" she growled threateningly.

"Well…" He swallowed again and tried to keep his jaw from trembling. "There – the, uh, mission was due to last three months, and, based on your mission start date and your, um, your return date, you only – you were only out for two weeks," he rushed. His voice came out as a squeak at the end.

There was a long pause, before…

"You had better notbe_ fucking _saying that I did my mission _too fucking fast_."

"No, no, of course not!" Iwazaru said quickly. He'd schmooze up to her, he'd kiss her ass more than any superior, he'd do anything she wanted as long as she left him alone and alive in the end.

"Then you have my pay." It was not a question.

The money was shoved into her hand with nary a word.

She grunted something, probably a curse word, and spun around. She stormed off in long strides and spat into a potted plant as she left the room, slamming the door behind her to announce her cheery departure.

Iwazaru took a deep, trembling breath and tried not to burst into tears.

Kotetsu, on his right, poked him in the side. His grin was palpable as he whispered, "You alright there, Hiyoshi?"

The witty retort of "fuck you" was so badly stuttered that one of the chuunin beside him laughed so hard that he threw up.

Goubatsu Maemi, for her part, yawned like a lion as she walked at a more sedate pace through the Tower. It wasn't that she was always pissed off – it was just that there were roles to be played, and masks to be worn, and some parts were easier to play and some masks more fit to wear on some, such as her, than others.

Like Mitarashi Anko – who she did, in fact, retain an occasional correspondence with – the wild kunoichi knew of the rumors about her. Some were true, most were false. Like Anko, she heard the accusations whispered behind her back; sometimes, said right to her face. Unlike Anko, though, Goubatsu remained hard and unyielding as the stone she wielded in combat. She didn't begrudge the snake-woman the occasional breakdown; Anko had, after all, been nearly killed by the one person she had implicitly trusted, even – yes – perhaps loved on some level.

Goubatsu liked to think of herself as being just naturally twisted and psychotic.

Of course, that wasn't even remotely true, but one does tend to embellish, even in one's own thoughts. People lie to themselves more than they do to anyone else.

Why, she thought as she rounded the corner and saw the pathetic sight that is Ryuuji Suimin and his new team, that shithead probably told himself that he and his fucked-up brother got along famously.

Suimin was leaning against the wall nearest to the stairwell, moaning lowly and cradling his head. The girl with short black hair was staring at him unabashedly, and the bubbly brown-haired one was clutching the little brown-haired boy to her chest in what could have been a protective and nurturing manner, had her hand not been circling just over the top of his pants (and threatening to dip lower).

The black-haired-one saw her when she strode determinedly forward and stopped in front of their sensei. Suimin didn't even notice.

After she punched him hard enough to send him halfway into the far wall, he very quickly gave her his full attention.

"What'd you do that for?" the leader of Team 16 whined piteously, wincing after each word. The long-brown-haired-one squealed with laughter and swung her captive around in hilarious delight.

"I had to get your fuckin' attention somehow, didn't I, Shithead?"

"Well…" He took off his sunglasses and pressed the heel of his palm to his eyesocket, hissing from the throbbing pain that still lay there. "Yes, I suppose…" There was a brief flash of gold visible when he put his shades back on "…but do you have to embarrass me in front of the kids?"

"Hey!" shouted black-hair in indignation. "We're not _kids!"_

"Until I can have sex with you without getting arrested for it, yes you are," he told her with a cheeky grin.

"S-_sensei!"_ black-hair squeaked, her entire face an unappealing shade of red. "You can't – I – you don't just _say _those sorts of things out loud-"

"Oi, bitch." Goubatsu leaned forward and dropped her face until it was level with black-hair.

"My _name _is Muriki Ryoko," she said bravely in the face of pure doom, "and I would appreciate it if-"

"_Bitch_," Goubatsu said again, her voice a vicious growl on par with the demons of the underworld. Black-hair, Ryoko, shut up immediately. It was a good choice. "We _kill people _for a fucking living – we can say whatever the _fuck_ we want. And just because you have a stupid little goddamn crush on Shithead for god knows _what_ fucked-up bloody reason doesn't mean you can tell him what the hell to do. And if you talk back to me," she snarled, silver eyes flashing angrily when Ryoko opened her mouth to interrupt, "you're going to be going _all the way through_ the fucking wall, I don't care _what_ seals and wards and shit are protecting this place."

Silence.

"Now you just need to disembowel one and rape the other, and we'll be good to go." A critical eye was turned to the brown-haired girl and boy. "Which one's which? 'cause, you know, I've heard a few different rumors about your sexual preference as of late, and you're bound to break at least one of the kids permanently and – woah!" Suimin ducked just as a very dirty, very scarred fist occupied the space where his head had been a moment ago.

Goubatsu growled threateningly at him, to which he only grinned sweetly back. After holding a particularly intimidating glare for half a minute, she hocked some grit, spit, and whatever else from the back of her throat and spat it down at Suimin's feet. With that done, she walked past him and began tromping down the stairs.

The Ryuji grinned and called, "I love you, too, Babycakes!" She gave him the finger. "Go say 'hi' to Idate sometime today – cranky fuck's missed you!" She still gave him the finger.

He chuckled to himself as he turned back to his team. Two out of the three seemed to be in a paralyzed state of pure terror, their wide eyes fixed on the staircase and their mouths hanging slightly open.

"Oh, come on," Suimin admonished, adjusting his sunglasses and somehow miraculously cleared of a hangover once again, "she's not _that_ scary."

Yumi just laughed and spun the terrified Takato around again.

* * *

Naruto refused to acknowledge that he was hiding. Because, after all, shinobi didn't hide like a mouse hides from a bad-tempered snake. Surely not. Shinobi snuck, and slunk in the shadows to complete a mission, and kept themselves from being seen. But they didn't hide. Naruto was a shinobi. Therefore, Naruto wasn't hiding.

He panted, trying to catch his breath; he had just ran a few kilometers in a handful of minutes. He wasn't too concerned about it, though. He'd be breathing normally before five minutes were up. He always did. His hand was rubbing at his collarbone; the skin there was red, slightly bruising from the abuse that it suffered from his hitai-ate banging into it again and again as he ran. Maybe he should wear it on his head, like it was supposed to be.

He lifted his head slightly and looked over the boulders that he was not-hiding behind. The coast was still clear. No Iruka-sensei.

He was hesitant to say so out loud, and knew that he would later retract the thought, but thank god for Hatake Kakashi. If it weren't for him, he wouldn't have been able to…get away. Because he didn't flee. Shinobi don't flee.

He relaxed slightly, lowering his head and not-hiding behind the rock cluster once more.

He turned to his side and reached to pick up – what the-? Where the hell was the Scroll? His hands flew over his body, running over his pockets, before he realized that, yes, he forgot it when he escaped from Iruka-sensei the first time. Well, at least it was safe; it's not like Sasuke and Sakura would tear the thing apart because they couldn't read it, right?

Right?

Naruto groaned. Sasuke might light it on fire, the bastard. Now, the dilemma: leave his not-hiding place and go back to retrieve it, or stay here and lessen the chance of Iruka-sensei locating him? Decisions, decisions…

Fortunately for our hero, however, said decision was not left up to him. Because just as his viciously-battling mind was reaching a conclusion, just as he was about to decide between running and hiding, a small object moving at approximately forty meters per second slammed into the stone just beside his head; slammed into the stone, sunk into the stone, went _through_ the stone, and kept on moving.

Naruto screamed and fell over.

Luckily no one was around to hear it. If anyone found out that he screamed like a little girl…

"Did you just scream like a little girl?"

Well, shit.

"No," he groaned from his position on the grass. "You're clearly insane. Go away."

A burst of laughter, followed by, "Oh my god, you did! You scream like a little girl!" did nothing to make him feel any better about himself. Neither did the continued laughter after whoever was talking finished their blasphemous statement; and it wasn't nice, pleasant-to-hear laughter, either. It was gut-busting, roaring, raucous laughter, like one might find from a grown man. Only it didn't sounded like it was coming from a grown man. For that matter, the voice hadn't sounded like a grown man's, either.

He lifted his head, hoping to god that he wasn't about to come face-to-face with a troll, and was greeted by the sight of a girl doubled over with laughter, her hands on her knees and her head ducked towards the ground as she tried to catch her breath. Naruto frowned.

"It's not that funny," he commented as he looked around, searching for someone else the laughter could be belonging to – because it couldn't belong to the chick in front of him. She looked his age! Girls his age didn't laugh like that…did they? Of course, the only feminine laughter he'd heard from the girls his age were the breathy giggles from Sasuke's Fan Club…And when he couldn't find anyone else in the clearing, and when he confirmed that, yes, the chick's chest was heaving and lips were moving in sync with the laughter that he was hearing, he had to admit that apparently girls his age _did _laugh like that. Some of them, anyway.

"No…" she chuckled. "It-it really is." And then she looked up at him, and Naruto felt somewhat ashamed for even thinking that he might have been searching for a troll. This girl was anything but.

Her brown hair was pulled up into two buns on top of her head – Naruto let himself laugh a little inside; they looked like ears, after all, like a bear's ears – and the remaining bangs fell over a dirty, scratched-to-hell hitai-ate. Her likewise-brown eyes were sharp, even when filled with mirth – and tears – from laughter. Her face was lit up with a wide grin, and he couldn't help but notice a large smear of dirt on her cheek. Her outfit was rather plain, a simple pink Chinese-styled top and plain black pants hugging her body.

She had three kunai pouches, one on her left leg and two on her right. Her hands, fisted upon her bent knees, were bound in bandages, spotted red. His eyes lifted back to her face, where she was beginning to gain control of herself again. Small, breathy gasps escaped every now and then, but mostly she was just smiling and looking at him.

* * *

"Have you seen Naruto?"

"Not since you chased the idiot away, Iruka-sensei. He really needs to get back soon, though; he'll get us in trouble if Kakashi-sensei shows up before he does."

He sighed. "Thank you anyway, Sakura-san."

* * *

"It's not that funny," he repeated.

She snorted. "Yes it is," she replied, standing straight. She was taller than him, too, dammit. When the hell was he going to find a girl who was shorter than he was? Life really wasn't fair. She looked (down) at him appraisingly for a moment before snapping her fingers. She pointed at him and said, "You're that crazy ramen prankster kid."

"Naruto."

"That's what I said," she dismissed, waving her hand noncommittally. "You were a few years behind me in the Academy." That made him feel a little better about being shorter than her; she was taller because she was older.

"If you say so," Naruto said with a shrug. He honestly didn't remember the girl. "And you are?"

"Tenten," she said as she walked past him. She hop-skipped over the rock formation and landed on the other side.

"Ten Ten?"

"One word," she corrected from the other side.

"Oh." He blinked. "What about your last name, then?"

"You didn't give me yours," Tenten said. There was a grunt and a scraping of what sounded like metal against wood. "Why should I give you mine?"

"Good point."

"Thanks." Her head reappeared over the boulder.

"Uzumaki."

"Tsume." She landed next to him. "I suppose this almost went through your head?" she asked, holding up a kunai. Naruto glanced at the hole in the rock before nodding furiously. She chuckled. "Sorry about that. I was in the middle of a training session – for the last week or so, I've been concentrating on my sense of hearing. Basically, I have my teammates set up a bunch of traps and logs on ropes and stuff, and whenever any make a sound, I chuck a shitload of kunai at them. It works out okay."

"And that isn't dangerous to anyone else because…?"

"Because everybody knows that this section of Training Ground Nine is where I train, and everybody knows that you shouldn't be anywhere near where I train unless you want to get turned into a human pincushion."

Naruto crossed his arms and pouted childishly. "So I've been kicked out of the 'everybody' category again. Great." Tenten chuckled again.

"So, speaking of, what're you doing out here?" She leaned against the nearest boulder and stared at him. She idly scratched her head with the kunai.

"Oh, that? I was getting away from my homicidal ex-sensei,' he replied with a shrug. Tenten raised an eyebrow and pointed the kunai at him.

"You were running away," she accused incredulously.

"No!"

"Is this going to be like how you _weren't_ screaming like a little girl?" She was grinning again.

"I was _not_ screaming like a little girl!"

"Of course."

"What are _you _doing out here?"

"I already said that I was training." Damn. That was a good point. Hmm…

"Don't you have a team?" Genius! Why wasn't she training with them?

Tenten shrugged. "Yeah," she affirmed uncaringly.

"So…if you have a team, why aren't you with them?"

"Because they annoy me, _and_ piss me off," she replied without missing a beat. "My sensei's insane, my teammate's a carbon copy of my sensei, and my other teammate's a popsicle."

Naruto was silent for a moment. "Don't you mean an ice cube? Icicle? Something more like that?"

"No, I meant what I said. He's a popsicle: cold and icy, with a stick shoved _way_ far up his ass."

Naruto laughed. "So, if that's what they are, what are you?"

"You mean besides gorgeous?" she asked wryly, grinning.

"Yeah, besides that," Naruto agreed.

Tenten let off a bark of laughter and said, "I think I like you, kid." She curled her hand into a fist and knocked it against Naruto's head. He batted it away and stuck his tongue out. She copied him before grinning again. "I'm well overdue for good compliments; I'm pretty sure the popsicle's gay, no matter how hot he is, 'cause he doesn't even so much as look my way, much less talk to me. And the clone has his eyes forever set on some girl a year or two younger than him named Sukara, or Sakira, or something."

"Sakura?"

Tenten snapped her fingers and pointed at him. "That's it. Pink-haired Uchiha fangirl, right?" Naruto nodded. "Was she in your class or something?"

"Yeah. She's my teammate." The girl winced sympathetically.

"Bad luck, there. For the safety and sanity of you and – more importantly – me, never bring the rest of your team around here."

"…what would happen if I did?" Naruto asked, his cursed morbid curiosity getting the better of him.

Tenten shuddered. Visibly shuddered, to where the point Naruto could see her skin almost literally crawl.

"That bad, huh?"

"Oh, yeah," she breathed, her voice shaking slightly. Dear god, what the hell was up with her Sakura-fan teammate, for her to act like this about him? Whatever it was, it sure as ramen was making Naruto swear to never end up anywhere near the guy. "I don't want to have a first row seat to that spectacle."

"Never ever?" She nodded vigorously, looking slightly scared. "Gotcha." Naruto looked around for a moment before looking back at her. "_I_ can still drop by, though, right?"

A smirk pulled her mouth up. "Absolutely. Like I said, I'm overdue for compliments. And now that I've met you and deemed you semi-worthy-"

"-semi-worthy? Wow, thanks."

"- you have to find me every once in a while and spoil me."

Naruto laughed once more. "Alright, Tenten."

"So…" she said after a minute of silence. She had raised an eyebrow as she looked at him. "Would you mind sharing why you were fleeing from your ex-sensei?"

"I was _not_ 'fleeing'!" Naruto argued hotly.

"Yes, you were. And you were hiding."

"No, I was _not_!"

"If you weren't running away to hide, what were you doing?"

"Escaping!"

"Running away."

"No! I was-"

"-you need to stop arguing with me," Tenten said, suddenly clutching a brace of kunai in each hand, her voice bright and chipper as she downright glared at the blonde. Naruto 'eeped' and fell silent. He eyed her weapons nervously, taking an instinctive step back. "That's better." And with a flash of movement, they were gone. His eyes flickered between her smiling face, her hands, and the kunai pouches strapped to both legs, and he felt his eyebrows lift a little.

"Woah," he said in a small voice. "How the hell did you do that so fast?"

Her smug smile only grew before she replied, "Practice." A whistle through the air and a thud behind him, and Naruto felt a sudden pain on his ear. His hand flew up to it, and he pulled it back a moment later and saw a thin film of blood smeared over his fingers. He blinked and looked back up at the brunette. He hadn't seen her move, and he definitely hadn't seen the kunai fly through the air. "_Lots_ of practice."

* * *

"Have you seen Naruto?"

"Um…no, w-we haven't seen N-Naruto-kun, Iruka-sensei…"

"Not since I almost pounded him to a bloody pulp a few hours ago, sensei!"

"Not recently, Umino-san. Kiba, it would behoove you not to embellish your exploits when speaking to a senior shinobi. It will rarely help you."

"Oh, fuck you, Shino."

He sighed. "Thank you anyway, Hinata-san, Kiba-kun, Shino-san."

* * *

"So, what were you doing before you got chased by your ex-sensei?" Tenten asked. She was picking at her teeth with a senbon needle, looking at her reflection on one of her short-swords. She had said she had a lot of them.

Naruto picked at his nails, bored, leaning against one of the boulders. He yawned once before answering, "Waiting for Kakashi's lazy ass to show up."

"Ow! Fuck!"

He looked over and saw the bun-haired girl staring at him – again – with a smear of blood across her jaw and the senbon in the grass next to her foot. The sword hung limp in her hand.

"Um…" He fidgeted under her gaze. "Yes?"

"Your," she started before blinking, frowning, and turning to the side and spitting up a gob of blood, "Your sensei," she went again, "is Kakashi?"

"…yeah…"

"_Hatake_ Kakashi?" Naruto could see something that looked suspiciously like fear, the same expression that she had on when he mentioned that Sakura was his teammate, creeping back into her eyes. He was quickly becoming terrified at what that seemed to be implying.

"…yeah…" he said anyway.

She opened and closed her mouth a few times without saying anything. She ended up closing her eyes and breathing deeply through her nose, something that caused Naruto a small amount of confusion. What the hell was the point of that? He'd seen Iruka do it a lot; it never seemed to do whatever it was supposed to do.

"Okay," she said in a shaky voice. One brown eye popped open and pinned him down like a falcon staring down a fish. He twitched. "You know how I said before that you needed to never, ever bring your team anywhere near here?"

"…yeah…"

"I'm adding to it." She held up all the fingers on one hand. "Never, ever bring your team anywhere near the entirety of this training ground," she said, pointing to each finger as she began a list of rules. "Never, ever try to find me in public with your team; if you happen to see me while you're doing a mission or something, act like you didn't." Naruto nodded. "If you ever meet my team, never, ever ask my sensei about your sensei." She pointed to her ring finger. "No matter what, even if your sensei outright orders you to train with my team, never, ever train with my team." That seemed kind of harsh. Naruto frowned a little, which was promptly unaddressed. "And last: never, ever – not if you're training with your team, not if you're training by yourself, not if you're eating dinner, not if you're about to fall asleep, not if you're taking a piss – say _anything_ about the-"

Tenten stopped and looked around quickly. She listened intently to the sounds of the forest around them and, when she didn't find anything wrong, she leaned in towards Naruto and opened her mouth. He leaned closer to hear. She continued, "Never, ever say anything about," she swallowed and said, "the flames of youth."

Naruto blinked and stood up straight. "The…" He repeated incredulously, "the flames of-" Her hand shot out and pressed against his lips, effectively silencing him from completing his parroting.

"Shhhhhh!" Tenten hissed. "Do. Not. _Say that._"

"But _you_ said 'that'," Naruto mumbled against her palm. She had very rough hands for a girl.

"I _whispered_ 'that'. _You_ seem to be incapable of anything below ninety decibels, and practically _yelled_ 'that'," she countered, glaring at him. He grinned sheepishly, and she removed her hand from his mouth. She narrowed her eyes as she looked at him. "Those are the rules. Understand 'em?"

Naruto nodded once, but added, "Except number, uh…three?"

Tenten raised her eyebrow. "Never ask my sensei about your sensei?"

"Oh, number two, then," he corrected himself.

"Never talk to me while you're with your team, and ignore me if you see me at such a time?" Naruto nodded. "Okay, see, if I meet your team before my sensei and his clone meet your team, they'll bitch and moan to me about not introducing them sooner, and practically insist that I arrange training with our teams, since I was already best friends with you guys. "

"…they say that sort of stuff?" Naruto asked weakly, feeling a little better after hearing her reasoning.

"They shout it, actually, with tears streaming down their faces. And they wear green spandex." Naruto stared at her. "D'you understand a little better where I'm coming from?" He nodded wordlessly. She sighed and flopped onto the grass. "I'd trade your lazy-ass, laid-back asshole sensei to my psycho, spandex-wearing, clone-spawning sensei any day of the week."

Naruto nodded again before shaking his head rapidly, as if to dislodge unwanted thoughts. "I'd be interested to see how that works out sometime."

Tenten's head shot up and she stared at him like he was insane. Her expression quickly slipped off, though, and she said, "Fortunately, it's never going to happen; Gai would rather shave off all his hair than give Lee away to another team, if even for one day." Naruto assumed Gai was the sensei and Lee was the sensei-clone. "Anyway," she said abruptly, "don't you think you've been not-hiding long enough?"

"I wasn't-"

"-I said you were _not-hiding_. Geez, kid, calm down."

"…oh," Naruto said, giving a crooked grin and rubbing his neck in embarrassment. "Oh!" he said, louder, when what she had said actually sunk in. "Yeah, I guess so. It's been a while; either Iruka-sensei's given up, or he's looking for me on the other side of the village."

* * *

"Have you seen Naruto?"

"Naruto? The little orange hellion? Nah, haven't seen 'im since he framed me for cleanin' out all the dango shops in Konoha. Got me into a shitload'a trouble with Mitarashi 'til she found out he did it, the blond bastard."

He sighed. "Thank you, Genma-san."

* * *

"Either way, the coast should be clear," he finished with a shrug.

"Then I guess this is goodbye for now."

"I guess so," Naruto agreed. "You gonna miss me?"

"You know it. You gonna miss me?" she asked, moving forward and resting her arm across the top of his head.

"Probably. You're the first girl I've met who isn't either insane or a Uchiha fangirl; it's a rather pleasant change." He swatted at her arm. "Even if you're annoying."

"Pot, meet kettle," she shot back snidely.

Naruto blinked and furrowed his brow. "…what the hell does that mean? What do a pot and a kettle have anything to do with anything? And how can they meet? They're not alive."

Tenten chuckled and made a 'huh' noise in her throat. "I thought everybody knew that expression."

"Again, I'm left out of that 'everybody' category," pouted Naruto. "What is it?"

"'Pot, meet kettle' is a shortened version of 'the pot calling the kettle black'," she explained. Her single-person audience stared at her incomprehensibly. "The pot and the kettle are both black; it's a playful way of calling someone a hypocrite, or saying that they're the same or doing the same thing that they accuse you of doing."

He looked at her suspiciously. "…sure…"

"Just…go back to your team already," Tenten told him, exasperated. She waved her hand away in dismissal. "Shoo."

"Fine, fine," he muttered. "Are you here every day of the week?"

"Except Saturdays. I do something a little different on Saturdays. Normally, I stay until around five, break for dinner, and come back for some more before I stumble back home at about one in the morning. Sometimes I just fall asleep in the training ground."

"Alright, then! I gotta go now, but I'll catch ya later, yeah?" Without waiting for an answer, he jumped up onto the boulder and leapt into the trees, wobbling dangerously as he tried to get his balance. "Thanks, Tenten!" he called. And with a jump, his bright-orange pants, along with the rest of him, vanished from view.

Tenten shook her head in amusement.

* * *

"What the hell're you doing back here?"

Kakashi didn't even stop walking as he answered, "I have to change my clothes; one of my students decided it would be amusing to smear paint all over them. I can't do their post-genin exam test thing with sullied clothes on. That would be unprofessional." He pulled his room key out from his pocket and stuck it into the lock on his door.

"Because we all know how you can't stand being unprofessional," the neighbor commented snidely before the door to the Hatake's room shut quietly behind him. He frowned, shadows tugging at his brightly-colored eyes as he sighed and muttered, "Idiot…". His own door opened and closed, and the hallway was empty once more.

* * *

Sasuke-kun was getting annoyed.

And as we all know, when Sasuke-kun gets annoyed, Sakura-chan gets pissed. And when Sakura-chan gets pissed, people tend to turn into less-than-recognizable piles of hamburger meat.

The bad thing? There were no people around – besides Sasuke-kun, of course. But one could argue that he was an angel, not a human, so he wouldn't directly classify as a person, now, would he?

There was no one to unleash her rage on. Where the heck was Naruto when you _actually_ needed him? No one provided stress-relief quite like the idiot blond prankster did.

"Pssst!"

If Naruto were here, she could beat him up; maybe Sasuke-kun would see how strong she was compared to the blonde, and see that she was worth his time, and they'd talk, and he'd offer to train her _privately_, and they'd meet in the evenings and lay down on a grassy hillside and watch the stars together and share their first kiss just as dawn was breaking over Konoha and-

"Pssssssssssst!"

"What the hell are you doing, dobe?" Sasuke's voice asked, snapping Sakura out of her fantasies. She blinked and looked around. Sasuke-kun was glaring to the right, at a thick section of underbrush. She squinted as she looked at it as well and saw a blue eye looking back at them from behind a wall of sticks and leaves.

"Naruto!" she hissed. "Where have you _been?_ Iruka-sensei's been looking for you, and Kakashi-sensei could have come _any minute_ while you were gone! You need to be more responsible, and-"

"I couldn't let him _catch_ me, Sakura-chan," Naruto replied, cutting her off. Sakura blinked rapidly, her mouth still open, as she stared at the foliage in something akin to shock; he had _never_ interrupted her before. "If he caught me, he would have needlessly punished and/or lectured me. I don't want that, and I don't need that, so I got away from him. And as for you, Bastard," he continued, the foliage rustling and snapping as he slowly walked through, "I do believe that I've arrived at least two hours before Kakashi will – partly my fault."

"Everything is your fault," Sasuke said with a mild raise of his eyebrow. "What did you do this time?"

"Eh…heh heh…" Naruto put on a sheepish grin as he fully stepped out of the underbrush. "Well, I sorta found him at the old ninja killed-in-action memorial stone, and smeared him with paint…which was mostly on accident," he added, "which is why I said that it was only partly my fault earlier."

"Still your fault," Sasuke told him. "So now Kakashi-sensei has another excuse, on top of his previous one, as to why he will be late this afternoon thanks to you and your stupidity."

"Great, Naruto! You idiot, now we're going to have to wait even longer for him to show up! Why do you…" Her rant faltered a little when she took in his appearance. "Why do you have orange paint all over yourself?" Naruto looked down.

Oh, right. Forgot about that. Being tackled by a man completely covered in the stuff _would_ smear some on him, wouldn't it?

"I mean, it's not a whole lot different than your normal uniform, but…" she began, only to trail off again.

"Yeah," Naruto replied with a dismissive gesture, "I kinda got hit by Iruka-sensei after he got hit by one of my traps." Sasuke looked up sharply – the little expression on his face making him look like he doubted the fact that an experienced chuunin was caught by a dead-last's trap; although, to be fair, one of the dead-last's traps had also caught a jounin, but we all know that Sasuke conveniently forgets a lot of things where Naruto is concerned – causing the blonde to give a little chuckle. "Good thing you guys didn't move from this area, or else you probly would've set off the apocalypse of Training Ground Seven. Wouldn't've made it out alive."

Sasuke snorted at the _obvious_ over-exaggeration and Naruto had the good grace to look insulted.

"What? You two should know how good I am at traps and stuff, what with everything I did in the Academy!" he protested, flailing his arms. They didn't look convinced at all. He sighed dramatically. "I guess I'll have to prove it to you."

Sasuke grunted, something that Naruto knew usually meant either 'bring it on', 'shut up', or 'as long as it doesn't mess up my hair'. The blonde prankster turned away from them and began to walk away, gesturing them to follow. Sasuke and Sakura shared a glance – a monumental point that may as well have been the first great step on Sakura's path to the Uchiha's heart – and, reaching some sort of agreement – another monumental point that may as well have been the second great step on Sakura's path to Uchiha's heart – trailed after Naruto as he left the clearing.

If they could see the grin on his face at that moment, they would have never even taken a step towards where he was headed.

* * *

Does anyone have any good ideas for Naruto's (eventual) Prankster name? I've got ideas myself, but I figured hey - forty-thousand people reading this shit, someone else is bound to have something better to offer. Anyway, so thanks, and bye bye!


	6. Chapter 6

The Marauders _ a Naruto fanfiction by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

Chapter Six

* * *

Sakura found her attention waning.

Of course, this was a naturally-occurring reaction when faced with the lone Uzumaki of the village, but she'd have never thought she'd be getting bored while listening to the boy explain something new to her. Likewise, the thought that he'd _ever_ explain something to _her_ was a thought just as ridiculous.

She supposed it only increased her disinterest in that what he was explaining was really just one big, stupid prank.

Traps were meant to capture, to detain, to _trap_; keep someone in one place, whole, incapacitated, or otherwise, until they were physically set free, usually by the original trap-setter.

What Naruto was explaining…

It was impressive in its own right, and she knew it. He was pointing out things that he'd made that she would have never even thought of, designs of mechanisms that were unlikely to be found in any textbook on the subject. He was creative, and from the high pitch and rapid-fire delivery of his accomplishments, very proud and very good at what he did.

But, still – Naruto's _voice_…

It wasn't that she was ignoring it, because she _couldn't_ – his voice was too nasally, and loud, and attention-grabbing to ignore. It was just that all of it was running together into a long droning sound that only succeeded in deterring her interest. Her eyes automatically slid from Naruto, kneeling on the grass and bent over a huge sheet of paper from which he was reading and pointing things out on, to Sasuke, who was leaning against a nearby tree with a medium-sized scroll opened in front of his face.

Judging by the way his fingers were curling tightly around the edges of the yellowing paper, she assumed that whatever he was reading was displeasing him immensely.

She was just making up her mind to go try and comfort the poor, poor, broken, sexy Sasuke-kun when a dirty hand waved in front of her face and dragged her attention back to the big piece of paper stretched out on the grass.

"Here, Sakura-chan – look!" Naruto's grin was wider than she'd ever seen; she would've thought it would have torn his mouth open by now. "You see here, how this one here is positioned _just right?_ Well, that's like that so it'll set off number fifty-seven, and – Sakura-chan! – fifty-seven, which, as you can see here," he swept a dirt smeared hand over something that looked vaguely like a decapitated dog if you squinted and tilted your head, "throws twenty blunted kunai. Now, I went into a little bit more detail with these drawings," he pointed at a few sketchy arrow-looking things, "and each kunai got the inside of their rings smeared with a heat-activated fast-acting superglue that we made, so if Kakashi-sensei tries to catch them by the rings to throw them back at us, he'll have to rip off at least one layer of skin to do so."

Sakura felt her eyebrows rise unbidden. Sasuke sniffed loudly, sounding quite offended from his place behind the scroll.

"Sasuke, I've told you before – you're not going to be able to read that," Naruto said loudly, not lifting his eyes from the paper. An irate grunt was given in response. "Okay…" His voice dropped to a mutter as he rolled his eyes and said, "I doubt they're going to keep the censorship up with you poking your pale, pointy little nose into them, and I'd bet a week of ramen that you ain't gonna like what they've got to say. Moron."

His own attentions swirled back to Sakura and his success, and he was suddenly all smiles again.

"So if Kakashi-sensei dodges those, or if they miss or something somehow, the fourth, eleventh, and eighteenth kunai launched are positioned to slice through the rope over _here_," his finger circled a line attached to a square with a small blob sticking out. "That's just over there," he added, pointing a finger past Sasuke to one of the trees at the end of the clearing. "Now, when that rope is cut, one of the many descendents of The Great and Holy Log swings down and hopefully crushes our maybe-could-be sensei underneath; I tried to anticipate where he'd be at such a time, so cross your fingers for a glancing blow, at least."

"Naruto."

"If he dodges, then that log – number three hundred and forty-seventh son of The Log – falls into this little square here," what he pointed out was, amazingly, actually square in shape, "which is filled with fish oil, rotten eggs, and a number of other disgusting substances that you'd probably hurt me for mentioning."

"Naruto," Sakura cut in haughtily. "If I'm going to _hurt_ you, then it's going to be because you did something stupid – _again_. Not because you mentioned bile, droppings, or urine."

Naruto raised an eyebrow at her word usage for a brief moment, and then opened his mouth and deadpanned, "Piss, shit, vomit, puke, dump, fart fudge, golden sh-OW! You _just said_, Sakura-chan – ow! Stop hitting me!"

"Sakura."

And the punching stopped.

"Naruto."

Naruto looked over at Sasuke. He appeared to be trying to reduce him to a smoldering crater using only his eyes. It didn't seem to be working. Since it wasn't working, Naruto had no reason to listen to whatever Sasuke was going to say next, so he went with the 'I'll stick my tongue out at you like a child and then ignore you' approach. To execute this approach, he stuck out his tongue briefly and sneered, "Your opinions and comments mean nothing to me, so I'm going to keep ignoring you."

So he did.

Unfortunately, this did nothing to incite Sakura's favor with him, and she resumed her role of detestable lead manga female. As seems to be in most cases, this meant she was quick to violence and not big on listening (until 500 chapters or so in when she realizes she's completely and utterly in love with the lead manga male). She freely showed these traits to her blonde teammate once again. He didn't appreciate it very much.

It was only after another prolonged game of 'no, wait, that's not supposed to bend that way, ouch, ouch, ouch' and another stiff rebuke from the stiff Uchiha that things got back on Naruto's track. It was a sad fact that nobody wanted to be anywhere near his 'track', temperamental girls especially. And thus it was that Sakura was, once more with nothing better to do other than gaze mistily at her pissed-off Sasuke-kun, stuck listening-but-not-really to Naruto ramble excitedly on.

After a time of listening to the Annoyance's exceedingly-exact explanations of the specifications of each and every trap held within and placed around Training Ground Seven, Sasuke's hands were fisted so tight around the Shinobi's Scroll that it was genuinely surprising that he didn't tear right through it. It was about this time that he began striving for his teammate's attention once more; this was obviously not an easy task.

"Naruto."

"-have to have something to substitute himself with; it has to be something loose, something that can be easily picked off of wherever it is. It also has to be large enough to…oh, what was it?...'account for approximately the same amount of space displaced'." Naruto gave a helpless shrug. "From what I got, that means that you have to switch with something about the same size as you, not, like, a kitten or a kunai or something."

"Naruto."

"But, yeah. So, in preparation for his assumed Kawarimi, I put a few things in the trees and the bushes near the clearing for him to switch with." His stubby finger jabbed at several scribbles surrounding the large circle that took up most of the paper. "Stuff like more Log-ettes, a few giant teddy bears, a blow-up doll of one of the chicks from his favorite book series – she's the one I riddled with explosive notes."

"Nar…" Hn. "Moron."

The switch from name to insult seemed to have no effect whatsoever, as Naruto simply continued with a Very Evil grin, "Poor guy's gonna cry himself to sleep for months if he ends up detonating her."

"Loser."

"Every one of the possibles I provided has a trap attached to it; mostly, they're attached to a string of wire that activates another catapult of paintballs and kitty litter or shuriken and angry, hungry kitties. Once he replaces himself with that object, the connection is snapped and he's either hit with a prank or hit with a trap, depending on which he chose."

"Dead-last."

"But remember that, even if he manages to avoid most of the big ones, there should still be all sorts of shit flying all around as this is going on, due to _more_ traps, _plus_ timed triggers, timed traps, and _me_ going about and setting off dozens of others manually."

"Dimwit."

"I can't say I'm entirely sure what you two'll be doing this whole time…I mean, it's not like you guys can just jump in and try to fight him – you'll get slaughtered! And I can't say for sure if that would be because of him or 'cause of me."

"Fool."

"Of course, I wouldn't let somethin' like that happen to you – can't be a team if you guys are in pieces, or lying dead somewhere."

"Failure."

"Of course, I don't know what he's going to have us do yet, so all of this might actually be completely unnecessary. But me and…um, I mean, _I_ thought about it a lot last night and thought that us versus him was the most likely 'big thing'. Wha – you thought the same thing, Sakura-chan? Wow. That's a first, isn't it? Ow! Okay, okay, don't hit! I might need to use that arm!"

"Dobe."

"So how much time do we have left? I mean, that rant should've taken up at _least_ – what d'you mean, it's only been thirty minutes? Son of a…"

"Moron."

"You know, Bastard," Naruto said, _finally _turning away from Sakura and his Big Damn Paper, "it's bad enough when you try to gain my attention by saying one word, every single one an insult at me, but it becomes downright pathetic when you run out of those and have to cycle back to the start of that list. Hell, I know tons; you coulda asked me for a few hundred more."

Sasuke just glared at him. Naruto sighed.

"Fine; what d'you want?"

Sasuke, his face warring between what looked like absolute rage, slight embarrassment, and confusion, held up the Shinobi's Scroll just long enough to snap it shut with the force of a small bomb. That it remained intact was truly a marvel of chakra, fuuinjutsu, and stupid, stinkin' luck.

With a voice colder than a frozen-over hell, Sasuke said, "Your _scroll-_" and he said the word 'scroll' like most people would say 'dirty', 'pathetic', or 'fate' if given the right rant to choose from. "-insulted me."

Naruto was silent for a long minute. His lips twitched suspiciously, and Sasuke's glare only intensified because of it. "I _did_ warn you of something like that," he said. If the previous glare could blow him into bloody chunks, what he received now could easily level Konoha, most of Fire Country as well. "Well, what's it saying that's got your panties twisted so tight?"

Scowl.

Glare.

When the scowl and glare didn't seem to convey his message to the scatter-minded blonde, the Uchiha was forced to elaborate. "It called me a nosy little bitch who needs to spend more time out in the sun, take a shower, get a haircut – especially in the back – and wear a shirt that doesn't look like it was stolen off an Aburame three years younger than me." The glare turned half-angry, half-'why-would-you-kick-my-puppy-like-that'-wounded.

Naruto had to visibly restrain himself from laughing. This included, but was not limited to, clasping both hands tight over his mouth and hunching over. Even so, his shoulders were shaking from the effort. In between snorts and giggles, he asked his uptight teammate what _exactly_ he wanted him to do about it.

Sasuke imperiously drew himself up to his full height of 1.5 meters and told him – nay, _ordered _him, "Make it stop."

This proved to be far too much for Naruto, who collapsed into roaring laughter not two seconds later. And true to form, not two seconds after that was his laughter silenced by a rather predictably-violent fist.

"Stop laughing at Sasuke-kun!"

* * *

Well…

Sarutobi Hiruzen stood, almost statuesque, in front of a shelf. His eyes, so often sharper than that of a hawk, were simply tired as they gazed wearily at an empty space, one that most definitely should not have been in such a state. His mind, so often stronger than a steel trap, so often working faster than a teenager's hand in his pants, was uncommonly weak and slow.

…that was…

One hand was absentmindedly rubbing the back of his head as he thought, while the other hung limp at his side, his pipe clutched between his thumb and index finger. Small embers fluttered onto the carpet, but he took no notice. His whole being was focused solely upon the emptiness that lay just above a small piece of paper with a question mark on it.

…problematic.

Naruto must have taken it when he had filched the Forbidden Scroll. Nobody knew about it because…well, because it wasn't exactly the most important scroll on the shelf, to be honest. He had never bothered to put any security jutsu on it aside from the one to make it unresponsive while inside the room. In hindsight, perhaps doing that, in addition to having a question mark as its marker, was not the best idea that he had ever come up with; curiosity at that which is forbidden is only ever passed by the curiosity at that which is unknown.

He let out a sigh.

Well, it _had_ been more than a day since it had been in the boy's possession, and there hadn't been any disasters…that was a good sign, right?

He gave another sigh. Even he couldn't believably cling to that stupid little hope. A day passing without incident was just another day of preparation for the next biggest prank. And now that he had that scroll…

Kami, he really needed a vacation. Somewhere nice…preferably with a beach.

* * *

The Hokage Memorial is perhaps the only structure in the entirety of Fire Country that even Uzumaki Naruto wouldn't dishonor. In the future, when asked why he would have the gall to deface the Hokage Monument and not the Memorial – which was not only a smaller target, but also a less-frequently seen and therefore far simpler target for his madness – he would calmly explain that smearing the Memorial and the revered gravestones inside would be a direct, personal insult to each of those people, whereas doodling on the mountain, even upon the probably-inaccurate faces of their great leaders, was more of a message that they weren't anything special compared to himself. A bit bigheaded, he would admit, but he _was_ twelve when he did that.

The Hokage Memorial is a smallish, ornate structure built from a dark red, rich, shining wood. A pond sits next to it, with three koi swimming contentedly underneath the surface; one added for each leader killed. The building itself is unmarked and is not shown on a regular map of Konoha. Inside sits three stone graves, the kanji for 'Sho' on one, 'Ni' on another, and 'Yon' on the last. In front of each lays a small token, something for them to be remembered by: in front of the first Hokage is a small bonsai, its leaves forever in bloom. In front of the second Hokage sits a basin of water, the words 'lives may end, but the bonds of brothers last forever' clearly visible around the sides. In front of the third Hokage is his most famous achievement, one of his three-pronged kunai, the kind he used to teleport in battle. A small slip of paper is wrapped around the kunai, and various kanji dot it like falling rain, slightly worn and fading. Bloodseals ring around the three graves and their tokens to ensure that they are not disturbed.

Scrolls lay open upon the walls, several telling of the previous Hokage's successes, others proclaiming their failures. Maps show of what buildings the Shodai himself created through the use of his Mokuton techniques, and what lakes and ponds the Nidaime raised up through the ground with his expertise in Suiton jutsu. Drawings from almost fifty years of Academy children litter the walls and the few tables that stand in the corners, each one lovingly scribbled by the eight-year-olds on their last day of that school year.

Whatever way you slice it, be it up, down, or around, the Hokage Memorial is a place honored above all others, one that has not been disrespected since its creation.

"Three hours to go…" A sigh.

On the subject, some might say that laying down on the small set of wooden stairs, lazing about directly in front of the structure while shifting between sleep and staring at the clouds drifting overhead could be considered as blatant disrespect towards the Memorial. The one who was doing so certainly wouldn't deny the accusations. That'd be much too difficult.

"Wonder when Chouji's gonna get here…"

Or, as he had a habit of putting it: it would be far too troublesome.

Another sigh. "Kinda wish I ate breakfast before I came here…"

Nara Shikamaru was not overly concerned if someone thought he was insulting the past Konoha Kages. That might have something to do with him not being overly concerned about anything, really, but we'll just ignore that little fact for the moment. No, the lazy bastard lived his life for the moment – and at this moment, all he wanted to do was watch clouds until his team arrived to do whatever they were going to do today. And despite being solid planks of wood, stiff and unyielding as solid planks of wood usually are, they were actually pretty damn comfortable. They didn't make his arms and neck itch like grass did, either – something which was always an annoyance after an extended period of cloud-gazing.

He grunted and moved his head side to side, scratching the back of his head against the red wood when an itch began to form due to his thinking about things itching.

He did wish that he hadn't bet the last of his allowance on when Naruto would show up for class; if he had money with him, he could have stopped by one of the food shops and grabbed something before coming here. But no, he had to go and bet against an Aburame – one of the worst kind of people, aside from a Uchiha or a Hyuuga (who were rather formidable with their unmatched matching poker faces), to bet against because, no matter what the situation, they knew more about it than you did and would undoubtedly come out on top without revealing a thing. Where Uchiha and Hyuuga had poker faces of the gods, an Aburame had just a face; their regular face _was_ their 'poker face', and it never, ever changed. And no one, not even someone gifted by a deity, could compete with that kind of thing.

His stomach rumbled, and he sighed once more. He did that a lot. He wondered why, once, when he was younger, but after he found out how the human body worked and the relatively mundane explanation behind it – as well as yawning – he immediately classified the whole thing as 'far too troublesome to think about any further, or ever again'. There was a lot of things that got labeled as that; women, for one. Refried beans, for another. Oh, and definitely the thought process used to promote genin to chuunin and chuunin to jounin – people who had no business being chuunin or jounin had, for some obscure reason made up by their superiors, consistently been promoted to chuunin or jounin. It was beyond stupid. It was so far beyond stupid, point in fact, which was the reason that Shikamaru no longer actively thought about it.

Ah, crap, he was actively thinking about it.

He quickly – 'quickly' being a relative term here, as the average Nara rarely moves at anything more than a kilometer an hour – rolled over, pitching himself off of the step he was currently occupying and falling onto the next one down. His head rapped smartly against the newly-acquainted plank of wood and he let out a sound of protest before shuffling himself into a position similar to the one he had been in a moment ago. He sighed.

That cloud looked remarkably like Uchiha Sasuke's hair…like a duck.

Shikamaru allowed his mind to wander (more) as he let his eyes lose focus on individual clouds and simply stare towards the general direction of 'up'.

Dammit. He forgot to grab lunch. Ino had said (after he finished lap number seven the previous day, which took far longer than logical reasoning said it should) that they were going to stay through the afternoon doing who-knows-what, and he better bring something to eat because he sure as hell wasn't going to snitch anything from her.

He had practically run out of the house this morning when his mom had tried to talk to him about how, since he was a man now, a man and a woman came together to make a baby. He didn't need to know about that, especially not from his own mother _during breakfast_. Jeez, he knew the whole 'birds and the bees' spiel since he was nine, when his wonderful, wonderful mind had gone and asked itself 'where do babies come from?'.

Being a stereotypical Nara – lazy to a 't' except when they want to know something, in which time they won't stop until they have their answer – he went to the library and sought out the necessary books. The librarian had been reluctant to help and even had the nerve to tell him that he should just ask his parents! He had ended up dismissing her and sorted through the reference cards himself to find what he needed.

He had not spoken to his mother or father for three days after that.

Shikamaru scratched the back of his head against the stairs again.

So he had no money for food; certainly an annoying situation to be in. He'd be starving by the time lunch rolled around. Chouji would be sure to share a little bit of his food, true enough, but the key word there was 'little'. The rotund boy never gave up more food than he felt he had to, cheery, selfless disposition or not. He could always steal part of Ino's. It's not like she could do anything to stop him. She could certainly do anything once he had done the deed, though – no one could run away from her forever. He'd get caught eventually. But…he _would_ have had something to eat when he got caught, as opposed to nothing whenever he'd get caught for something equally unimportant later in the day.

Scratch, scratch. Sigh.

He'd figure it out later. Thinking like this was too much of a bother when he was trying not to think too much.

His thoughts wandered to some of the other teams. Team 8, with an Inuzuka, a Hyuuga, and an Aburame. _The_ Aburame, possible bane of his existence, warring competitively with _that_ Yamanaka, other possible bane of his existence, for the spot of most troublesome person his age. The boy was far too intelligent for his age, and wise enough to be able to use that intelligence to his advantage. Shikamaru outshone the kikai-user in raw intellect, but he didn't care to use it; it was a gift wasted on the wrong person in his opinion. Someone else should have had his brains, someone who would actually use it, and achieve their highest goals with it. It was a burden to be bore for the Nara, something that would ultimately keep him from his own humble shinobi-based goals that only went insofar to him becoming a chuunin and retiring after his daughter was married and his son was a famous jounin.

He didn't want a lot in this life: a simple, easy existence, ending with him dying before his normal, plain-looking wife and kids.

Shikamaru hummed a little; would it be possible for a skilled Yamanaka to do something like that? – to be able to take away his genius, and give it to someone else? He knew that they could extract memories, and erase the parts of the brain that determined emotional responses, and use chakra to stimulate specific nerve clusters in order to gain reactions needed, whether it be rage in the middle of a battle or guilt, fear, and the like when interrogating a suspect.

He might have to ask Inoichi about that. Maybe he could get his dad to bring the blonde over to the house sometime this week.

* * *

"Crazy woman," Naruto whined, rubbing his arm as he gave the scroll a sharp jab. He gave a half-hearted glare (at best) at his two teammates, who were back to their usual routine: one pining, one ignoring. "She didn't have to hit so hard…" The first thing he saw when it rolled open was a short, annoyed-sounding sentence by his favorite of the four.

_Hawkeye __**does**__ wish that the reader would take things more seriously. If he does not wish to be handled in such a manner, then he should act in such a manner that stifles the illogical reasons that his pink-haired teammate dreams up; not endure the treatment and keep attempting his fruitless efforts of…whatever he is trying to accomplish._

The fact that he was the favorite was sarcasm, obviously.

Naruto grunted – internally agreeing with the Prankster by a fair amount – and unrolled it further, revealing the conversations and sentences he missed while he was gone. Last thing he read was Sparky being all impressed-like with Sakura's encyclopedic knowledge of Kakashi-sensei. She could be scary-smart when she wanted to know something…every other time, she was just plain scary.

He shuddered a little and let his bright-blue eyes flicker across some of the past entries upon the paper.

_Irons can't believe the ineptitude of that idiot Inuzuka!_

Wow, that was a lot of 'i's. Wonder how the others would respond to that…

_Hawkeye can't help but hire harlots to whore out to hounds of hentai._

Oh, like that.

_Sparky spies on shinobi and slices sushi when he sends scrolls to Sensei._

_Spitfire spits fuckin' __**fire**__._

They all certainly had a way with words. Especially 'fire – very eloquent. And Irons gets very touchy about his traps, apparently; the work of an artist!

_Sparky thinks that the Inuzuka acts just a tad too much like the owner._

Hey! What the hell did that supposed to mean? He was _nothing_ like Kiba! The dog-boy was brash, and arrogant, and really, really loud, and, and…

…dammit, he was right. Now that was going to be on his mind the rest of the day.

_Spitfire is wondering who the other teammates of the dog are, because, so far, neither one has said a word._

Oh. He might as well answer that one before he went any further. "Hey, guys. 'fire, you asked about Kiba's teammates earlier…" A short reply bled into view.

_Spitfire did._

"Did you still want to know?" he asked her.

_Spitfire does, although she is quite certain that she was not, and is not, the only one._

If anyone else wanted to know, though, they didn't speak up, so Naruto shrugged again. "Shino's an Aburame – those creepy bug guys, in case you didn't know; I don't know if they were around when you guys were…" he trailed off and looked at the paper uncertainly.

_Sparky assures the owner that 'those creepy bug guys' were thriving like the colonies they breed when he was around._

"That makes things easier," the honorary Prankster said, nodding to himself. "Oh, and the other partner's a Hyuuga. She's…um…" He looked up in thought and tapped his chin. Who was she, again? Hana? Hinara? Haku? Hanigasa? Hanabi? Dammit, why was he so bad with names? "…um…" He grinned sheepishly at the scroll; he could almost _feel_ the annoyance of the sole female member building. "...something with an 'H'?" It was almost surprising he knew even that much.

_Irons thinks that the owner should think of something to say, and fast, before Spitfire-san blows up._

Right. Way easier said than done. "_What?_ I _told_ you before that I don't pay attention in class, and it's not like she ever _says_ anything, anyway! It's not my fault I have no idea who she is!"

_Hawkeye commends the reader on his stupidity. If Spitfire had a form, the reader would undoubtedly be kissing dirt right about now._

Naruto recalled a time when he thought that Spitfire was amazingly lenient with him, despite being every bit as violent as Sakura. He remembered observing that none of her more violent descriptions seemed to focus on him. He knew that he thought, at one point, that he preferred 'fire's attitude over Sakura's.

So much for all of that.

* * *

Team 8…

She sighed, a warm breath fluttering out from between her perfect, pouting lips. Her ruby-red eyes were narrowed in concentration.

…this was the seventh Team 8 that this village had seen. She had been on the fourth of them, once.

She watched three genin search for her; they had divided up, and gone to different Training Grounds. Good. They would cover more ground that way. However, that would also mean that it would be easier for one of them to miss something. The boisterous Inuzuka was actually rather close to her current position; he would have been able to locate her very quickly if he had brought the timid Hyuuga with him.

The Aburame, silent as the grave, was the furthest away, investigating the outskirts of Training Ground One. She was disappointed in that one. Out of all of them, she hadn't expected him to be the one so hopelessly lost. Hinata, bless the girl, was wholly inexperienced with using the Byakugan for tracking, and she had thought that the white-eyed princess would be the worst off. But she was surprisingly talented, searching vigilantly for telling tracks in the soil or grass, scraped bark on tree branches, broken twigs and snapped leaves littering the ground. For someone who had never used her bloodline for such a purpose, she was very careful and very thorough with it.

Yuuhi Kurenai was almost impressed. Almost.

Kiba was, as she had expected, the closest to her trail. It was harder for genjutsu to fool the sense of smell than most of the others, second only to touch. It would make sense for an Inuzuka to find someone the easiest; after all, she had stood closest to him while she was briefing her team, in order to ensure that he smelled the bit of perfume she had applied that morning. She was also fairly sure that he had taken far too much enjoyment in memorizing the scent during the briefing, if his near-constant inhaling was any clue.

Unfortunately, their close proximity had let her catch a whiff of his scent as well.

She frowned, her red lips quirking downward.

He smelled as bad as his ninken – ninja dog – did. Worse, actually. There were two possible reasons for that; one, he just wasn't prone to bathing. Or two, Inuzuka naturally didn't bathe that often (she had met her possible genin's mother before, and she was as foul as her son), so that they could locate each other via smell if need be – one of the fastest ways of finding a person, especially for a canine.

But Shino, the Aburame…she had been on a mission with his father, Aburame Shibi, once, and had seen what he could do. Shibi had, in no small terms (literally), told her that his son was shaping up to be an excellent shinobi. What he was showing now, however, was making her seriously doubt the clan head's claims. He was nowhere near any of the clues she had strewn across the village. It was almost as if he were…

Her head jerked up, eyes snapping open and cancelling the jutsu she had been using to view all three of them at once, just as a creak of a branch sounded loud in her ears. Her hands flew into a sign and she disappeared in a quick flurry of leaves.

Not two minutes later, three figures landed upon the tree, lighting on different branches and inspecting the area around them. The one with blacked-out glasses spoke first, small beetles buzzing across his fingertips. "Her sense of hearing is more acute than I anticipated."

"K-Kurenai-sensei is a jounin, Shino-kun…she sh-_should_ have good hearing," Hyuuga Hinata told him.

"Dammit!" the feral genin growled in frustration. "Almost had her, too!" The small puppy perched on top of his head gave a bark, and he shook his head from side to side before looking up at his teammates. "Good job, though," he relented in a much calmer tone of voice. One of his hands reached up and idly scratched his companion behind the ears, earning him a yip of appreciation. "I didn't know you _had_ that many kikai, to be able to make a clone of each of us."

Shino moved under his jacket before saying in a low voice, "It would be more accurate to put the Mushi Bunshin under the category of henge-based jutsu rather than bunshin. It does not take many kikai to form a clone – approximately one-fourth of my colony is used on each, based upon the complexity of the image formed."

Kiba kind of blinked, and let out a semi-interested "huh", before letting his eyes flick over to Hinata. He gave her a toothy grin. "And you, Hinata – you're as good at tracking as I am! And I'm an Inuzuka!"

She flushed under the praise, and hesitantly tapped her fingers together. She peeked at her teammates through her bangs and stuttered, "W-we shou-should, um, keep, um, l-looking for Kurenai-sensei, Ki-iba-kun, S-Shino-kun." Her cheeks reddened further when Kiba gave an enthusiastic nod before tilting his head back and inhaling. His mouth dropped into a frown, and he sniffed again. A furrow creased his brow, and he growled again. He opened his eyes and looked over to Shino.

"There's nothin'. Think she used Shunshin," he grunted. He really didn't want to relent, but hey, sometimes you had to call it quits. "Can you find her?" he asked the insect-user.

"Of course," Shino replied monotonously. "I find it surprising, however, that she has not yet located the kikai I placed upon her body."

"Eh, surprising or not, it doesn't matter. If it gives us an extra advantage, why complain?" He watched as Shino whispered to the bugs pooled in the palm of his hand. He ran his tongue over a fang in impatience as he waited. After their little conference went on for over a minute, Kiba grumbled, "What's taking so long?"

"Y-you have to b-be patient, Kiba-kun…" Hinata admonished lightly. Kiba grunted. Shino's brow furrowed, barely visible to the others, but otherwise ignored the Inuzuka. After another minute, he let his hand drop, dispersing the bugs into the air as it went. He pushed his glasses up closer to his eyes and looked at his teammates.

"West," was all he said.

They vanished.

* * *

_Irons wants to know where the owner was before the Uchiha picked 'em up!_

_Hawkeye would like to inform the reader that the self-righteous Uchiha was nosing his way through the Scroll while the reader was gone. He kept mumbling about how useless and retarded the reader is – something Hawkeye rather agrees with, for the most part, except he does not sound quite so pathetic when he says it._

_Spitfire wanted to cream the little bastard – seriously, does he have __**any**__ respect for other peoples' property? And she tells Hawkeye that 'self-righteous Uchiha' is rather redundant._

_Sparky is disappointed in the callousness of the owner's teammates thus far, no matter their positive traits. Neither one respects him; one ignores him and looks through his personal belongings, the other sees fit to disagree with everything he says or does. Sparky wonders what happened to all the normal teams._

_Irons wants to know where the owner was before they got picked up by that Uchiha!_

_Spitfire finds it unfortunate that the kid didn't manage to land himself on a team with cool, prank-loving people like himself._

_Sparky doesn't think the village would be standing if that had happened, even if it has only been a day since the owner graduated._

_Hawkeye sincerely doubts that the reader is __**that**__ good._

_Sparky admonishes Hawkeye-san, and tells him that he is far too negative for his own good._

_Hawkeye ignores Sparky no Baka's scolding and tells __**him**__ that he has no reason to be so positive as to unnecessarily exalt the reader's capabilities._

_Irons argues for Sparky-kun's point, and tells Hawkeye-teme that being unnecessarily positive is better and less annoying than being unnecessarily negative._

_Hawkeye replies that being unnecessarily negative is a lot more fun than being unnecessarily positive, and that Irons should try it sometimes; it's freeing, it is._

_Spitfire unnecessarily thinks unnecessarily that unnecessary unnecessarily unnecessary unnecessaries unnecessarily unnecessarily unn-SHUT THE FUCK UP! Spitfire can't __**stand**__ it when the others begin arguing about __**nothing at all **__in some vain hope of proving each other wrong! She wants to know why the hell it even matters, considering that Sparky was __**joking **__when he gave that smarmy little comment. Personally, she thinks that Hawkeye should simmer down, Sparky should stop riling Hawkeye up, and Irons should stop joining those little spats and just go back to asking where the kid's been in the last half-hour._

_Sparky apologizes._

_Irons…wants to know where the owner was…before…whatever…_

_Spitfire thanks the two of them, and not-so-patiently awaits Hawkeye's response (hint hint)._

_Irons doesn't think Hawkeye-teme is going to say anything for a little while; he tends to sulk when Spitfire-san yells at him._

_Hawkeye takes offense to that, and denies that he 'sulks'…and he apologizes to Spitfire for the fact that his behavior forced her to yell at him._

_Sparky would like to point out that Hawkeye-san didn't apologize for arguing._

_Hawkeye would like to point out that Sparky no Baka didn't apologize for arguing, either – he just gave a vague, half-assed apology that could have been for anything._

_Spitfire would like to remind them about her whole dislike for arguments about nothing._

Naruto chuckled and let his head fall back against the tree. He stared at the leaves as they rustled in the wind, one or two occasionally tearing loose from the smaller branches and fluttering through the air. It had been another forty-some minutes since he last saw Kakashi; the man would hopefully show up within the next hour, at most. Sasuke had since extracted himself from Sakura's presence and began some light training a good twenty or thirty meters away; at the moment, he seemed intent on making a shape on one of his kunai targets. It looked kind of like either a fan or a mushroom, depending on how hungry you were. Sakura was crouched down in the grass, watching him with a glimmer in her eyes, about twenty meters from his left.

"Wonder where he is…" Naruto mumbled to himself, thinking of his horribly tardy teacher. Honestly, what did the man _do_ when he was off not being where he was supposed to be? Earlier, he was at the KIA memorial…paying respects to an old friend, maybe? Okay, so some of that time could be understandable, if he was honestly using that time to do that. But what about the other two, three hours left? Did he just stand at the memorial the whole time and _pretend_ to pay respects for the rest of the time? And if he did, couldn't that be seen as disrespect towards the dead – loitering among their gravesite (or whatever)?

Or did he just do something more mundane (and sufficiently less blasphemous), like wander around Konoha? Maybe he took that time to shop, or study, read up on missions, or on his team, or something. Maybe he liked to get in some training of his own before he came to meet them. Maybe, _maybe,_ he actually did something productive when he was supposed to meet up with them.

Naruto squinted up at the sun, almost reaching its peak in the sky. He huffed irritably.

Or maybe he just liked to fuck with his students.

Asshole.

It'd be cool, though, if he could find out where he was…so he…could…

"Hey, Irons…"

_Irons is here!_

Naruto smiled a little. Crazy bugger was always so excited; reminded him of a ten-year-old on a sugar high. "You said before, that…that you could make a map of Konoha if you wanted to, right?"

_Irons did. That was when the owner was wondering if the Pranksters could do other things other than just talk, like draw something; Irons showed his 'Tame 'em Blame 'em' trap as an example._

"Right." He noticed that Irons named the contraption, and made himself a mental note to ask later if he, or all of them, named every prank that they did. He was about to continue when the large, child-like writing continued scrawling across the paper.

_Irons and the other three should probably tell the owner a few things about this map, before they show it, first._

It stopped there, and Naruto shrugged and said, "Sure, okay." It continued once more.

_Sparky would like to remind the owner that the Shinobi's Scroll was created before, as you told us, the Kyuubi demolished the larger portion of Konoha. That means that this map is not going to be an exact replica of the village as it stands today._

_Hawkeye tells Sparky no Baka that they could just show the damned map now and the reader could, throughout the next few days, help them retrieve a current image of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. As the reader wanders through the town, he could consult the map and inform them of what was still there or what has been replaced._

Naruto raised an eyebrow, impressed. He hadn't thought of that, and, apparently, neither had Sparky. If he actually liked Hawkeye, he'd be complimenting the guy.

_Spitfire has to acknowledge that Hawkeye actually got one over the high n' mighty Sparkster; that doesn't happen often, even considering how much Hawkeye wants to prove Sparky's idiocy._

_Irons says that with that little problem out of the way, there isn't a whole lot else to talk about, other than finding people on the map._

"Woah, woah, hey," Naruto said, holding up a hand in the classic 'stop' handsign – or, if you were in ANBU, 'reporting', or in Root, 'I'm about to say something that might be really stupid, so please please please don't kill me' – and giving the paper a quizzical look. "'_Finding_ people?'"

_Sparky is pleased to say that he believes that to be the most ingenious part of the Shinobi's Scroll._

_Irons points out that Hawkeye-teme was the first one to think of it._

Naruto blinked. Hawkeye thinking of things Sparky didn't, and Irons giving the bastard credit? What was going to happen next – Spitfire informing him that Irons was, in fact, her husband, and that she was mother of three when they whipped the Scroll up? Sheesh…

Hawkeye, for some reason foregoing his bragging rights, stayed silent, and nothing appeared upon the paper for a number of seconds until Sparky's loopy, elegant style bled into view.

_Sparky assumes that the owner is undoubtedly aware of their somewhat-sentience to the real world?_

"…'sentience'?" Naruto repeated, his face screwed up in confusion.

_Spitfire would like to say that sentience can also mean an awareness, alertness, or a responsiveness to something._

His face smoothed out and he said, "Oh." He tilted his head back, thinking, before looking back at the scroll and clarifying with, "You mean like how you guys can know someone's there, or know where you are, even though you can't see? Stuff like that?"

_Spitfire answers with a positive._

"Oh, okay. And?"

_Sparky is glad the owner gets that, and moves on with his explanation…_

* * *

One, two.

Sasuke frowned.

Duck, pivot.

He could see Naruto out of the corner of his eye – Sakura out of the other, staring at him with what could only be called absolute worship – still pouring over that scroll that he had.

Leg sweep, roundhouse.

That scroll had barely been out of the blonde's grasp since Sasuke first saw him with it the previous day, in the classroom. He read it, it looked like he was pointing at things and mumbling to himself, it looked like sometimes he was talking to the scroll _itself_, he laughed as if he read something particularly amusing on it at times. He rarely set it down out of reach.

Jump, twist, flip.

But when he, a Uchiha, tried to look at it, when the idiot left it after running away from Iruka-sensei, it seemed to be completely inked-out. Censored beyond believability. Now, one speculation was that Naruto was just playing everyone for fools, acting like he was reading and talking to and thinking about and protecting it in order to make the people around him _think_ that it was important and noteworthy.

Axe-kick, land, spring.

Another option was that, somehow, like he had said, Naruto _was _the only who could see what was on it. But how? The dobe couldn't have come up with something like that himself. Again, there were two answers. One, he found it. That was a reasonable enough conclusion; even Sasuke had to admit that the blonde probably knew his way around the village, and all its secret little nooks and crannies, far better than he did. It came from years of running and hiding from the…the military police and ANBU, after any number of his pranks. He could have stumbled upon it in any one of the Konoha hidey-holes.

Leap forward, draw kunai, step one, two three, jump back off his target.

The other possibility was that someone gave it to him.

His arm snapped forward. Four kunai slammed into the bark of the tree, hard enough that they only stopped once they reached the metal rings at the end. He snarled as he twisted through the air, landing lightly on his feet.

If someone gave it to him…

His eyes, narrowed and flashing with suppressed anger, flickered over his male teammate. He was still looking at that damned scroll.

Why _him_?

Naruto, perhaps feeling the Uchiha's trickling _ki_, perhaps instinctively knowing someone was looking at him, took his eyes off the paper and met the eyes of his teammate. Sapphire blue met raven black, innocent cluelessness and wounded hostility, and Sasuke felt his anger lose its hold for a moment, then crumble. He tore his gaze away and set it at the tree he had been training with. He gave a wince, followed by a speculative "huh", when he noticed how far the kunai were buried in the bark; he had so easily lost a battle with his emotions, but… he was powerful when he wasn't thinking straight, when he was angry…

How could he channel that?

He shook his head and glanced over at Naruto, offering a silent apology to the blonde for his former thoughts. He would not allow petty feelings like jealousy or envy completely overtake him.

"_I…I…envy…Naruto."_

He winced again. He still could barely believe he had said that, _admitted _to that. It was true, after all – that was what Kakashi-sensei had told them to give. He was their sensei, their instructor, their team captain, their leader. If he gave an order, it was to be followed, no matter how foolish it sounded or how oddly it was presented – and it was certainly both of those. Most everything Kakashi-sensei said fell under those categories, a lot of the times being both simultaneously, this all despite having known the man for less than half of a week.

He curled a hand around one of the kunai and tugged it from the tree.

"_I…I…envy…Naruto."_

He pulled another out, his arm jerking slightly.

Sasuke envied the blonde, just as he knew the blonde envied everyone else around him, including his Uchiha teammate. Naruto envied everyone for having parents – the one thing in the world he never knew, and the one thing in the world that he would give anything to have.

The third didn't want to budge, so he had to use some force. It broke out after a quiet crack of wood.

Sasuke envied Naruto for the exact opposite.

The fourth kunai, the last one, was stuck fast.

He envied Naruto for _not_ having parents.

He set the other three weapons on the grass next to the tree and put both hands on the kunai handle before pulling again, hard.

He envied Naruto, who had never known a parents' love, or their touch, or their whispered words.

He pushed and pulled, working it up and down, trying to make more room for the knife to work in. He pulled again.

After all, not having parents, never hearing their words, or feeling their touch, or knowing their love…was infinitely better than having them, and having those things…

The kunai tore free, sending a brief shower of splinters at him, and he fell backwards, hitting the ground and letting out a grunt of irritation. The wood fragments had given him a light slice along his cheek, and he felt a thin film of blood collect there. He looked down at the kunai in his hand and sighed to himself. He grabbed the others and walked over to his pack. He stowed them in its pocket and sat down against another tree, eyes trained at the sky.

…only to have them all taken away.

Uchiha Sasuke bit his lip and closed his eyes.

* * *

"Okay, so – bear with me, I'm tryin' to get all this down to a language where I can understand it, okay? – basically, what you're saying is that you can…track people by their chakra?" Naruto asked hesitantly, attempting to wrap his brain around what Sparky had just told him.

_Sparky assures the owner that that's exactly right, if unrefined._

"I _said_ I dumbed it down so I could understand it…" he mumbled. "I'm sorry I didn't eat a dictionary when I was young like you guys did."

_Irons only ate a weapons manual. His dog ate the dictionary._

"Shut up."

_Hawkeye only ate-_

"Spiders and toilet water, when I track your ass down," Naruto cut off, reminding the prankster of his previous promise of taking up the task in Spitfire's place. "Shut up," he repeated. No writing returned, even after a full minute. Impatient, and annoyed that they had all decided to listen to him instead of just the one he was trying to get to shut up, he gave the paper a poke and said, "Sparky." The entity apparently took this as his queue to continue and characters bled into view.

_Sparky would like to add that they have to be able to recognize a persons' chakra before they are able to locate them._

"Recognize…?" His brow furrowed. "How does someone get recognizable? Do they have to, like, do that whole 'chakra-touch-slash-blood-touch-with-the-owner' thing that Ayame had to do? 'cause that'd make it really hard for me to get you a lot of people – I could get, like, four others. Maybe five." There weren't many people that were ready to spill blood for him. Or be around him at all, really.

_Hawkeye tells the reader that the process is nowhere near that annoyingly convoluted. All that has to happen is that the persons or person wished to be recognized must use, and Hawkeye quotes Spitfire here, 'a shit-ton of chakra near or around the area of the Shinobi's Scroll'. That 'shit-ton' of chakra can be a concentrated amount, specifically to allow us to recognize it, or it could be the kind let out in the midst of a shinobi battle._

"Wait, so if I take you guys with me – like, on a kick-ass mission or something, where we get attacked and fight with some enemy ninja – you would be able to know where they are?"

_Sparky responds with a negative. Well, not quite a complete negative, but he does point out that the owner's thoughts are not completely accurate; the Pranksters are able to track shinobi after they use a certain amount of chakra in a fight, but they would not be able to map them outside of Konohagakure; the Pranksters rarely took the Scroll outside the village, and do not have any renditions of other places recorded inside it._

"Well…" Naruto pouted a little. "Couldn't we just do what Hawkeye thought of before? I mean, have me, uh, tell you guys what's outside, and you guys draw it? Could I just get a regular map from one of the local stores and base some of it off of that?"

_Sparky again responds with a negative. Store-bought maps are nowhere near accurate enough as they would like, especially those of Konoha. If the owner wants maps of other places, he will have to do it Hawkeye-san's way._

Naruto grunted in distaste. "Ugh." Exactly like that. He just knew the bastard was gonna be smug and unbearable for a little while. "Fine," he said shortly. He looked up to the sky; it was noon now, perhaps a little past. He snapped the scroll shut and groaned loudly. "Where the hell is he?"

"Where the hell is who?" a voice responded directly next to him.

Naruto screamed and fell over.

Hatake Kakashi blinked as he looked queerly at his maybe could be student. "Why, Naruto-kun," he said sweetly, "one would think you weren't happy to see me." He tilted his head slightly and did a little eye-smile. "Did you know you scream like a girl?"

* * *

Ohayo. How is everyone this loverly evening? Or morning, or afternoon, depending on wherever the fuck you are on this big blue planet.

Nothing to really say about this chapter, to be honest. Wrote the last...third of it or so just today. The Hokage finally realizes the Scroll ain't where it's supposed to be, Sasuke gets his ass insulted by the Pranksters (and, on that note, I believe that this chapter more than makes up for their lack of presence in the previous chapter, don't you? Yeah, you better, you ungrateful readers, you), we get to see a bit of Team 8 (there ya go, you die-hard Hinata fans, you. I'm more interested in the BAMF that is Shino), we finally start to see the abilities of the sauced map (the Marauders Map) start to trickle into the Shinobi's Scroll (and I know some of you were waiting for that rather impatiently).

I was originally planning to have Naruto get them to form the map, after they explained how it worked, and actually track down Kakashi with it, but it turned out to be the way it is, instead. Deal with it.

I assume some of you were waiting to see some actual effects from Sasuke's previous confession about envying Naruto. Well, there's a bit for you. More to come later (probably on the Wave Mission, due to, you know, tension and all that jazz - and yes, I'm going with the Canon Wave Mission. Sorry for those who think that that is TOTALLY lame, and that I should go for something different, but...hey, I'm writing, not you. Deal with it.)

Later.


	7. Chapter 7

The Marauders _ a Naruto fanfiction by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

Chapter Seven

* * *

"_Why, Naruto-kun," Kakashi said sweetly, "one would think you weren't happy to see me." He tilted his head slightly and did a little eye-smile. "Did you know you scream like a girl?"_

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" Naruto muttered to himself, a childish pout stretching his lips downward. "Just laugh it up, you great balooga…" He was sitting upright again, his legs splayed with the Shinobi's Scroll between them, and his arms were crossed tightly against his chest. The posture he'd ended up slumping into only made him look more like the child he was acting like. He had tried to jolt himself out of the mood he'd sunk into with a few inner pep talks about how ninja – real ninja, anyway, like how they were in the middle of a battle, because he knew for a fact that a number of chuunin and jounin acted exactly as he was normally – didn't pout like a kid who didn't get his way, but he found that this did absolutely nothing for his mood. If anything, it only annoyed him more, because he knew that he shouldn't be acting like this, but he kept doing so anyway.

The others, being his maybe-could-be-jounin-sensei Hatake Kakashi and Sakura and Sasuke, had taken residence a few meters away, laughing quietly to themselves – some more obvious than others. Naruto knew it wouldn't last too long – after all, the fact that Kakashi had finally shown up was bound to drill through their skulls eventually – but still, the point was that they were all laughing at him.

Getting laughed at was a good thing, usually, lately. Because it usually followed him deliberately making a fool out of himself, through some sort of prank, or screwing up something on purpose – like him using the Oiroke no Jutsu on Iruka-sensei; good times, that was, good times.

Now, however? No, they were laughing at him – even _Uchiha Sasuke_ was laughing at him, even if it was all inside his own bloated head, because he was smirking at him with what could only be described as suppressed mirth – because he just so happened to scream like a girl.

It wasn't his goddamn fault he screamed like a girl. Frankly, he blamed his old man; dude probably had stones like raisins. Seriously, what kind of man passed down a scream like _that_ to his offspring? Hell, he would've preferred a scream like his mom's than this prissy little shriek that he got stuck with. His dad was an asshole for giving him that.

And speaking of assholes…

He sent another scathing glare at Kakashi and called out the mentor's name.

"Yes, Vile Nemesis?" the jounin asked cheerfully.

"You're an asshole."

"I know!" he sang.

Naruto harrumphed and crossed his arms tighter and looked away from his tormentors.

_Asshole._

Kakashi, for his part, was waiting rather patiently for his maybe-could-be-team to finally figure out that he had, in fact, arrived, after making them wait a little over three hours. He had expected Sakura to start railing on him the moment he appeared, but apparently he wasn't the only one that found the fact that Naruto screamed like a six year old girl to be extremely hilarious. She had laughed so hard that her face matched her hair for two whole minutes. At the moment, she was calming down, taking larger-than-normal breaths and leaning against a tree, facing away from everyone else.

Honestly, he was a little concerned about her. It really wasn't healthy to laugh that hard, especially at something that had no business in making you laugh that hard in the first place.

Okay, well, _honestly_ honestly, he didn't really care all that much about her well-being, and she could laugh until she was as blue as Sasuke's weird-as-hell Aburame-style shirt. He'd be perfectly alright with that. Maybe she'd pass out so he would have one less genin to work with for the day. And Sasuke? He could keep all his emotions inside until he exploded and sprayed everyone around him with blackish, dark, emo-thoughts, his sticky, icy personality, and the dying embers of what could have been a witty sense of humor. What a shame that would be.

And as for Naruto…well…well, if he died, then life around Konoha would be very boring, wouldn't it? That would suck. But, all in all, it wouldn't change too much, and he pretty much ignored everything around him anyhow. So it wouldn't affect Kakashi in any huge way. He'd live life much the same as he always did: alone, content, crying inside every once in a while but obstinately shoving any depression or despair that he may feel into some dark, deep corner, and having fun making other people miserable. It was a fine life, full of life, laughs, porn, and-

"Oh, hey!" He said suddenly, smacking a fist into his palm once he realized something he forgot. "I forgot to tell you guys that I was here, didn't I?"

Naruto shook his head. Sakura was miraculously cured of her laughter and straightened up like she had an ice cube dropped down her shirt. Sasuke glared at him.

Poor, wounded pride.

"So, yeah. Just…you know…putting that out there," he added, waving his hands in front of him. He could see the pink-haired Haruno advancing towards him, her face now red from anger instead of humor. Her teeth were clenched tight, as were her fists. She didn't look happy, for some reason. You'd think she would be thrilled that he showed up.

"Ka-ka-shi-_sensei_," she growled menacingly once she stood in front of him.

"Oh, hello Sakura," he answered in his trademark pleasant tone. "How are you today?"

Sakura closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Her fists gradually stopped shaking (as much), and the color receded from her face a little before she opened her eyes again. "I'm fine, Kakashi-sensei. How are you?" She asked the last bit with a perfectly innocent little smile. It was a terrifying sight to behold, and would have sent some of the strongest men screaming in terror.

Kakashi would have been doing so if he had a soul. Luckily, he had sold it years ago for harmonica lessons. On a side note, it was very difficult to play harmonica through a mask.

His hand idly traced one of the small pockets on his flak jacket, where he held his favorite harmonica instead of a summoning scroll, or a small vial of medicine, or a ration bar, or what have you.

"I am well, Sakura," he said, dropping his hand away from the jacket pocket. "I do hope I didn't keep you waiting long."

"Oh, not at all, Kakashi-sensei," she replied in that sweet-as-honey tone. Naruto shuddered violently, as if he had just been submerged in freezing-cold water. Sasuke had the sudden urge to run home and hide under his bed. "Are we going to start with our lesson, Kakashi-sensei?"

"Well, I wouldn't exactly call it a lesson, Sakura, but yes, I suppose we should get on with it." That brought everyone's attention back onto him. He smiled – with his eye, someway, somehow – and continued with, "The Cool Thing, right?"

Naruto practically sprang from his seat on the grass with a soft "sweet!", and bounded over to stand behind Sakura – you really didn't want to be in front of her, or in her line of sight at all, really, when she was acting like how she was now. Sasuke kicked off from the tree that he had been leaning against and sauntered behind the blonde, warily eyeing Sakura as well.

"Neh, neh," Naruto spoke up, suddenly very much not depressed about his girly-scream anymore. "It's the Big Thing, Kakashi, not the Cool Thing!"

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that," Kakashi chided. "It can be both, after all."

"None of us _care_," Sasuke said, cutting across Naruto, "whether or not it's big or cool." He prudently ignored Naruto's grumbling of how he did _too_ care, and how he was a bastard who took no notice of the little people and their feelings. "Are we going to begin whatever it is that we are supposed to begin today?"

"Absolutely."

There was a long, suffering, maddening silence when Kakashi decided not to say anything more. Sakura was the one who broke it, with a distinct gnashing of teeth that sent several small mammals scurrying for their respective holes in the ground and a reigned-in, expectant, "_And?"_

Kakashi did a double-take. "Oh, you want _specifics?_" How annoying.

"Specifics, Kakashi-sensei. _Now_," Sasuke growled menacingly. Kakashi tilted his head to the side and disappeared.

Suddenly, there was a thump and a grunt of pain from behind the other two genin, and they turned as one to see Sasuke squirming underneath a lounging Kakashi. The older shinobi was using the younger, might-be-shinobi as a seat, a foot-stool, and an armrest all in one.

"Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura gasped, right by Naruto's ear. He winced.

"Why, my dearest little Uchiha Sasuke-kun," Kakashi crooned, digging his elbow meaningfully into the boy's upper spine, "I could have sworn you just gave me an _order_. Now, correct me if I'm wrong-" and he punctuated his sentence by forcing Sasuke's face a little more into the grass "-but I don't think it is correct protocol for a _genin-_" Sasuke's arm twisted further towards his own back, drawing out a prolonged grunt of pain "-to be telling the jounin, let alone the jounin-_sensei_, what he should be doing." He looked up at Naruto and Sakura. "How about you two? Does that sound right?"

"Not really," Naruto replied, not sounding very concerned at all.

"N-no, Kakashi-sensei," Sakura stammered, all the wind having been blown clear out of her sails. She wasn't about to go pounding away at the jounin for doing something stupid or not doing something for a while now. Good. Was about time she learned a little something about positional authority. Or just plain authority, for that matter. You can't just go beat up whoever makes you mad; sometimes, most of the time, actually, you have to grin and bear it and spit vile curses at the person's back and hope to the gods above that they don't have good hearing.

"Good." He looked back down at the pinned Uchiha. "And you?" Sasuke grunted, and Kakashi pressed harder against him, bringing forth a sharp swear and a gasp of pain. "And _you?_" the jounin repeated, his voice a little cooler than it had been the first time.

"I don't think – aaaah," Sasuke let out a breath as air left his lungs, "that it is proper…Kakashi-sensei," he said shakily.

"Good." Kakashi disentangled himself from the genin and stood up, brushing dirt and the like from his uniform. "Oh, and it's not _technically_ sensei, yet," he added as an afterthought.

Pause.

Erupt.

"WHAT?" Sakura yelled. _Really_ yelled, too, from her place right near Naruto. He cringed when the sound almost destroyed his left eardrum and wisely moved a meter to the side in order to prevent any further inner-ear injuries.

"What…" Sasuke started, a little out of breath. He was quickly cut off by Sakura.

"Kakashi-sensei!" she started.

"Not yet!" the aforementioned jounin replied with cheer.

"Kakashi-sensei!" she tried again, this time ignoring the interjectory denial from the elder shinobi. "What do you mean by that? We were assigned to you, and you to us as our sensei!"

"Yes, yes, that is true. We were 'assigned' to each other," the Hatake agreed, using finger-quotes around the word 'assigned'. "But just because we were 'assigned'," he used the finger-quotes again, "that doesn't mean I have to keep you."

"Eh?"

"So glad of you to join the conversation, my little Moriarty."

Naruto was about to ask who the hell Moriarty was, or if it was an insult or something, but decided against it. Instead he said, "I mean, I know that you weren't our full sensei – or at least I had an idea of i-"

"-Naruto!" Sakura turned on the blonde with a fury. "You _knew_ this?"

"Calm down, Sakura-chan," Naruto told her, holding up his hands in a calming gesture. "I wouldn't say I _knew_ about it, but when Iruka-sensei and Kakashi-kun were talking after we, um, bumped into him by the Killed in Action Memorial over that way-" he jerked a thumb over his shoulder "-Kakashi told Iruka-sensei that he was a 'maybe-could-be-sensei' a number of times, and not a jounin-sensei. Iruka-sensei got kind of annoyed about that. And about the whole…_porn_ thing."

Sakura seemed taken aback, particularly when Naruto uttered the word 'porn'.

"But I really didn't, you know, _think_ about it," the blonde finished with a shrug. Kakashi took up the mantle and continued the gist of the conversation.

"The spawn of Satan is right," he said. "You see, while you kids _are_ given a team number and placed under a jounin-sensei, it is ultimately up to that jounin-sensei to take you, or to reject you." He smiled. "That jounin can do so under practically any criteria he or she chooses, whether it be for lack of talent, lack of respect-" he winked at Sasuke "-or for the fact that the jounin just plain doesn't like you at all."

Naruto started looking distinctly uncomfortable.

"For whatever reasons, the jounin-sensei has the power to reject you as a team. If you are so denied a team position, you are forthwith sent back to the Academy for another year of training."

"WHAT?" Sakura, again, yelled. Luckily, Naruto was standing several meters away from her this time, and did not rupture any particularly sensitive muscles of his. And Naruto, for his part, did pretty much the same, only with a little bit more swearwords.

"You utter _bastard!"_ he growled, taking a step forward. Then Kakashi looked at him. He stopped and quieted down. Sakura felt no such necessity, and proceeded to continue as she was.

"What exactly do you _mean?_ Sent back for an entire _year?"_

"I believe that is what I said, Sakura," Kakashi said, his tone not-so-pleasant. It did not deter her, nor did it Sasuke, who chose that moment to jump in as well due to selective memory loss.

"That is unacceptable," Sasuke stated firmly, glaring at the jounin with an emotion that was essentially amounting to fervent denial.

Kakashi sighed to himself. _Children._ He was beginning to get annoyed with this lot.

"Whether or not it is unacceptable to you, Sasuke, is absolutely none of my concern. I do not care about your desire to go as high as you can as fast as you can. I do not care about how long it takes you to get the power you need. I do not care, essentially, about what you believe you need. What I _do_ care about is that the shinobi under my command _listen_ to my commands, with as little backtalk as there can be. Does that sound like either of you?" His gaze flickered between the Uchiha and the Haruno. They did not answer. "No," he said in their place, not wanting to wait the two or three minutes it would take for them to grudgingly speak up, "it does not."

Naruto spoke up, his voice hesitant. "Uh…Kakashi-sensei?"

"Not yet, remember?"

"Right." He was silent for a few minutes, then said, "So, I mean, you're saying that you…you might send us all back to ninja school…just because you don't like us?" Kakashi nodded, giving off a distinct air of pleasantness. "So…how do you decide if…if you don't like someone?"

Kakashi smiled to himself. At least someone was getting guilty about their actions. Good kid, surprisingly.

"Well," the Hatake said out loud, "the biggest thing I use to decide whether or not I like you is, in fact, the Big Thing." The blonde seemed to relax a little, his muscles losing some of their rigid tension. "Were you worried?"

Naruto started and shot a guilty look at the jounin before grumbling to himself. Something that sounded very much like a "No" was heard, but it was so obvious that it meant 'yes' that it wasn't even funny. Kakashi just nodded.

"Relax, kiddo," he told the genin. "I don't hate you nearly enough to kick you off without a good reason – and your…_prank_…" Queue flashback, queue horrible memories, queue violent, horrified shudder, "…while mentally scarring and just plain bad in taste, is not grounds enough in my mind to give you the boot. Shoe. Sandal. Zori. Whatever."

After another long moment of silence, Sakura took her turn to speak. "So…sensei…" She didn't even seem to hear Kakashi's melodious interjection of 'not yet'. "What exactly is the 'big thing'?"

"It's not 'big thing, Sakura," Kakashi scolded, waggling a finger at her. "It's the Big Thing! With big, capital letters to give extra emphasis on how important it is."

Sakura rolled her eyes and huffed irritably. But she went along with his little game anyway. "Fine, Kakashi-sensei. What is the _Big Thing_?" Kakashi beamed.

"Oooh, that wasn't just capitalized, Sakura – you went and _italicized_ it! _That _shows _dedication_. I think we're going to get along just fine!" He looked like he was about to throw a companionable arm around her shoulders, but two factors presented themselves before he managed to do so. One, the very, _very_ large difference in height; he would have had to get on his knees and _still_ bend over a little to be able to do it from an acceptable height. And two, she looked a little like a snarling bulldog at the moment, and probably would have ripped his arm clean off had he put it anywhere near her person.

He wisely backed off.

She growled, and the jounin decided to remember what she was talking about. "Anyway, as I was saying," he said, his voice bright and chipper for someone who essentially told the genin that he could keep them from being ninja if he wanted to not ten minutes ago. "The Big Thing. It is, essentially…" his voice trailed off and he cocked his head to the side. "…nah. On second thought, why don't you guys tell me what you thought it was, first? After all, you've had an entire day to try and figure it out. I'm sure it drove you mad, Sa…" He looked meaningfully at Sakura, about to finish his sentence with her name, but thought better of it when he saw the expression she had on her face. He switched names midway through the word. "…a-suke."

Sasuke just looked confused.

"Uh…"

"Yes, Arch-enemy?"

"I don't think either one of them is in quite the right mood to answer your questions, Kakashi…"

"That's probably true," the aforementioned jounin nodded in agreement. "What about you, then?"

"Oh, well, Sakura told me that she thought the same thing when I talked to her about it earlier."

"So she'll talk to you, but she won't talk to me?" Kakashi crossed his arms and made a pathetic whining noise in the back of his throat, like that of a small dog. "_So_ not fair."

"No, it's not that. She hit me right after," Naruto assured him.

"Oh, that's okay, then." Cheery, plucky, happy-go-lucky-sensei was back. "So, you were saying?"

"Yeah. So we-" and here he winced very conspicuously, as if realizing that he just let something out that he really wasn't supposed to; he quickly gathered himself and began again, completely ignoring whatever he had let slip. "So I was kind of thinking that it would be something like a three-on-one spar, us versus you, to test where we are for our skill level. Or something like that," he added quickly, unsure of his answer. "And as I said, Sakura-chan thought pretty much the same thing. The Bastard, though…" He sent a sideways glance over at Sasuke, who had lost the confused expression and regained the cool composure he usually donned. "…well, he didn't really have anything to say." Sasuke grunted; Naruto assumed it was of the 'shut up' variety. So he tacked on the word, "Ever." Another grunt, more insistent this time.

Kakashi chuckled a little – and for the first time since they met, it actually sounded like a chuckle, and not some mutated form of a perverted giggle / drunken chortle offspring – and said, "Well, then; you – and Sakura, of course – were quite correct when you said that it was us versus you." He blinked, turned his head too look at an upwards angle, and exuded a faint air of confusion. Then he blinked again, shook his head, and turned his lazy-eyed gaze back towards the only active student of the bunch. "I mean, you three versus me." He nodded to himself – that sounded about right. It wouldn't really be fair if he and Obito teamed up to lay an almighty ass-whoopin' down on the poor boy. Wouldn't be sportsman-like at all. Two on one…how unfair!

"But," he continued, holding up a finger – a significant point pointer, if there ever was one – "you were wrong…mostly," he amended quickly, "…when you suggested that it might be a spar." His significant-point-pointer hand lowered and dipped down to the kunai pouch resting on his right thigh. Something jingle-jangled. "As you could probably figure out, unless you received no education whatsoever during the last ten years of your life, the abbreviated version of Big Thing is a simple BT. Good?" There were several confused nods. "Excellent. Now, BT does not really stand for Big Thing, surprising as it may be."

"So the test's real name isn't the Big Thing," Naruto stated, nodding to himself.

"Yes, Naruto, that's very good," Kakashi complimented him, giving his head a quick three pats, like one would with a small child who just figured out that two plus two does not equal five, nine, or fish. "BT – the official name, that is – is a little something that I like to call…" He withdrew the hand with the point-pointer out of the pouch. Two small golden spheres hung from his fingers, suspended on small lengths of wire. He raised them to shoulder – _his _shoulder – height and shook them.

_Ching-a-ching-a-chinngggg._

"…the Bell Test."

* * *

"A test? A _test?_ Why the hell would you actually _want_ one of those? Isn't my taking you and those other two kids on as members of my team and _not_ testing you compliment enough? Doesn't my taking you on without complaint or without such a test simply reaffirm my trust in your abilities?"

"Oh please, sensei, you only took us without complaint because you were too hung over to _care_ who was on your team. Same for you not testing us; I'm going to bet that it's really bothersome to fight with a hangover, huh?"

"Shut up!" Ryuji Suimin, resident alcoholic jounin-sensei of an unfortunate Team 16, was currently walking down the winding, dusty streets of Konoha with a certain someone who he would prefer to just _go away_ yapping at his heels.

"Giving whiny, pathetic little comebacks like a small child really doesn't befit a man of your rank, sensei," chided the 12-year-old Muriki Ryoko, dry wit of her team and the current torturer of her team's leader.

"Does this kind of torture give you a vindictive, perverse pleasure?" the man asked painfully.

"Yes. Yes it does," she replied with a smug smirk.

"It gives you a _perverse pleasure?"_ he asked again for maximum sexual-oriented clarification. "Really? Because I have to tell you, you have some screws loose if annoying me gets you off – no matter how amazingly attractive I am or not." He ignored her warning growl – as well as the telling pink blush filling her cheeks – and raked both hands through his dark brown hair in aggravation. He gave a low swear and muttered, "Where the hell _is_ she?"

"She?" This, whether she was going to admit it or not – she wasn't about to, by the way; just putting it out there, you know, in case you were actually thinking for a minute that everyone was going to stop lying to themselves in this story, because they won't – caught her attention. "She who?"

"Who else?" He squinted behind his oval sunglasses and frowned before gritting his teeth and throwing his hands into the air. "Oh come _on!_ It's past noon already!" He turned his head and looked towards the opposite side of the street and growled again. "Where could she _possibly _be on such a beautiful, clear _glorious_ mid-day a little bit after noon-time?"

"Uh, sensei?" Ryoko tried, lifting a finger to try and get his attention. Unfortunately for her, his attention was now on a rampage and her small, slender, and very feminine finger was paid no mind as he kept twisting his head from one side of the street to the other as he stalked through it.

"I mean…" he fluttered for a minute, waving his hands in front of him in agitation before he continued with, "_Noon_, for god's sake! If she's not at a bar already, then I'm going to spare her no mercy…"

Ryoko face-faulted.

Bars. Of _course_ it was bars. And it couldn't be Mars Bars, or Kit-Kat Bars, or a good ol' Hershey Bar, either. It had to be a _bar_ bar. The kind with alcohol. Where one went to get drunk. Where one in _particular_ – and here she gave a meaningful glare at her sensei – went to get drunk _very often_. Hell, she'd been on his team for – what, two days? Less? – and it was pathetically obvious. He had gone directly to a bar after he ended their first team meeting – which he was hung over for – and had managed to show up hung over again the following morning, when they went to grab a mission.

She cracked a smile. That was when she and Yumi had yelled directly in his ear, possibly rupturing an eardrum, and sending him tumbling down three flights of stairs. He deserved it, though, so what did she care?

She huffed and gave a disgruntled sigh. No matter how attractive she found him – which she _did not_, she told herself firmly, giving herself a mental equivalent of a slap upside the head – his drinking problem was and would undoubtedly continue to be just that: a problem.

The problem-sensei in question was mumbling angrily to himself, something about making 'that woman' talk to his 'broody, mopey, sarcastic twat' of an older brother, and how he'd 'fix her up quick' with his 'fucking weird-o crazy psycho-voodoo-logical bullshit therapy crap'.

"Sensei?" she tried again.

He swore and flipped the sun off, complaining about 'too bright' and 'sensitive eyes', and pressed his sunglasses closer to his face.

"Sensei."

He seemed to hear her that time, and said, "Eh?" before turning completely and looking directly at her. Or at least, somewhere in her immediate vicinity – he could have been looking at the shapely young woman bending over to pick up an apple from where it had fallen, who he could easily see if he looked just over Ryoko's shoulder. It was awfully hard to tell when he wore such dark glasses. "Oh, right," he said. "Ryoko." He grinned. "What's up?"

She clucked her tongue once and lifted her hand, showing him her index and middle fingers. "Two things, sensei." She waited until he nodded in understanding. When he gave it, she continued, "One: who is 'she'?"

"She? She who?"

The sad part was that he sounded genuinely confused.

"The 'she' that's supposed to be at a bar already, or else you plan on forcing her to talk to your brother," she explained as patiently as she could. For her troubles, she got laughed at. She did not appreciate it.

"Oh, puh-_leaze!_" Suimin chuckled. "I wasn't going to _force_ her. Christ, I don't think there's anyone _alive _who can force her to do anything." Ryoko stared at him expectantly. "Ah, right. Anko."

"…who?"

The jounin-sensei did a double-take. "You don't know who Mitarashi Anko is?" Ryoko shook her head, and he gave a low whistle. "Damn," he said in an awed tone of voice. "I thought she was one of those things that everyone knew about; like how Kurenai's a closet lesbian, or the meaning of the phrase 'the pot calling the kettle black', or how when Asuma dies, it's _not_ going to be because he smokes eight packs of cigarettes a day, or how it's a very, very bad idea to eat an explosive note." He shrugged. "You know, one of those things."

"Sure…"

"Anyway, Anko's a drinking buddy." He bobbed his head and, reaching some conclusion, tried again. "Okay, she's a _heavy_ drinking buddy. We only hang out when I want to get completely plastered."

"But you always want to get completely plastered," Ryoko pointed out.

"Absolutely," Suimin confirmed without a shred of shame. "Which means we get to hang out that much more. I have to tell you, she is a _lovely_ drinking partner."

Ryoko shook her head and decided to move directly to the Second Thing before she had an urge to punch something, or – more probable – someone. "Second Thing," she said, holding up her two fingers again. "Why exactly were you planning on getting bottoms-up-drunk this time?"

He looked a little startled, as if she very well should have known the reason for why he would ever do such a thing. "Why, my dear, black-headed little student-girl," he said sweetly, patting her a little on the head. He halted doing so when she swiped at his hand with a spare kunai. He continued in a voice that practically oozed with that obvious, 'why wouldn't you know this?' tone that so many people adopted when speaking to anyone below the age of eight, "My team succeeded in completing their first mission, and I have to celebrate."

"Sensei…" Ryoko groaned, letting her head fall into an open hand. Yes, he wasn't looking too attractive now, was he? Silly little teacher-crushing girl. "Didn't I give you a lengthy lecture about you looking – and succeeding – for meaningless reasons to go drinking just yesterday?"

"…it's very possible," Suimin admitted. "But what would you do if I told you that I drank so much last night that I could barely remember the events of that entire day, let alone that one, stupid, five minute little telling-off?"

"It was a twenty-three minute lecture, sensei."

"…well…that just illustrates my point even more, doesn't it?"

"It's not a good point to be made, sensei."

"Not caring. A point to be made is a point to be made."

Ryoko sighed.

"So, sensei…"

"Yes, student?"

"…do you go drinking whenever _anything_ happens?"

"Of course not!" he exclaimed in a wounded tone. He then continued in a perfectly normal voice, "Only when something awesome happens."

She jutted an eyebrow up and stated dryly, "Nothing 'awesome' happened today, sensei."

"Sure there did! I told you already, don't you remember?" He peered down at her, an eyebrow of his own arching over a blacked-out lens.

"You had better not be referring to how we completed a D-rank mission, sensei," Ryoko all but growled at him.

"Yes I am!"

"It was a _D-rank_," she shot back with extra heat.

"It was a mission!"

"D-rankers don't even _count_ as missions."

"Yes they do!" Suimin insisted. "And I am _obscenely_ proud of my team for completing one!"

"So proud you decide to celebrate the success and get trashed."

"Yes." Still not a shred of shame on him.

"Sensei, you said that you only go drinking when something awesome happens…"

"Ah, ah, I only go _heavy_ drinking when something awesome happens," he interjected-corrected.

She ignored him and continued, "What things classify as 'awesome' enough to go participate in _heavy_ drinking, then?"

Suimin sighed in defeat and began ticking things off with the voice of a martyr. "Oh, you know…getting sent out on a mission, completing a mission, getting back from a mission, getting laid, getting a girlfriend, breaking up with said girlfriend, a new class graduating from the Academy, someone I know get upped to chuunin or jounin, getting a new team-" he grinned at her "-having a meeting with the Hokage, saving a kitten from being run over by a cart, feeding a hungry stray dog, paying my bills off for that month, paying off the bills for last month, paying off the bills for next month, getting a new kitchen appliance, getting a new bathroom appliance, giving money to that one homeless guy who camps out over by the fake ANBU headquarters, giving money to that one homeless chick who hangs out near Training Area 34, giving money to someone who is not in financial trouble…" He waved his hand in the air in a rolling motion. "…and on and on, so on and so forth, blah blah blah-bity blah, the list keeps going for a _long _while, really."

Ryoko shook her head. She could honestly say that, if she were asked at that moment, she was ashamed of being on Team 16.

* * *

"…the Bell Test," Sasuke repeated in a bland tone.

"Yes."

"We are…supposed to retrieve them from you?" he asked.

"Pre-cisely!" Kakashi answered in an off-key sing-song voice.

"Sensei…"

"Not yet!"

"Oh, would you please cut that out," Sakura snapped. "There's only two bells, sensei." She glared at him, as if to challenge him – as if to _dare_ him to say 'not yet' again, just one more time…

"Very good, Sakura, you can count. I'm very proud of you."

She ignored his condescending tone and said, "Shouldn't there be three bells? One for each of us?"

Kakashi blinked and looked at her, perfectly miming a confused expression. Well, as long as 'perfect' is a matter of perception, that is. Although, to be fair, it is either very hard or very easy to reveal any expression at all when over three-fourths of your face is covered. "One for each of you?" he repeated in a completely baffled tone. "Now why on earth would that be?"

A vein started to pulse on her unnaturally-sized forehead (or so it is said to be), and she ground her teeth as she tried to think of reasons not to listen to that little voice inside her that was screeching for pain, blood, and the torture of small mammals. The list was rapidly decreasing, and she knew that going berserk and slaughtering Naruto and Kakashi – because she could never hurt Sasuke-kun, even if she was insane with rage hotter than the sun – was not really a good idea in the whole of things, so she voted for continuing the conversation, if for nothing but to distract herself from the fact that her blood was boiling in anger. Her voice quivered a little as she attempted to keep her rampant emotions on hold. "It just-makes-sense," she managed to grind out, biting off each word.

To their eternal surprise, Kakashi nodded in agreement. "That's true – it _does_ make sense to have three bells, one for each of you. So why in Jiraiya's name would I only allow there to be two bells?"

"If you're doing something that doesn't make sense to someone else…" Naruto muttered to himself – and jotting down the name 'Jiraiya' in his little mental list of notes; he knew he'd heard it, or seen it before somewhere, but he couldn't remember where at the moment – thinking the question over in his head. "…then you have a damn good reason for it not making sense…" He had a great amount of experience with that. Over half the people that ended up being victims or observers to his pranks over the years had thought his actions made no sense.

"Oh well, I'm sure you'll figure it out eventually," the jounin said, waving his hand for their attention. "For now, though, what you need to know is this: I have two bells. There are three of you. Two – or one of you, provided you are selfish enough, or the other two are unskilled enough – of you must have gained possession of my two bells in…" He reached behind his back and brought out a small alarm clock, seemingly from nothingness – because there had been absolutely nowhere for him to hide it before he pulled it out. He tapped the button at the top of the clock. It let out a small chime, then another. "…two hours," he said.

Surprisingly, it was Sasuke who spoke next. "You said two must have your two bells. What happens to the remaining person?" He, as per custom, managed to state his question instead of asking it as a normal person would.

"Well, that's where the fun part comes in – see, whoever doesn't have a bell by the end of two hours…" he trailed off, to allow for the time it took the genin to lean forward in anticipation. "…will not be part of my team."

"Say **WHAT?**"

"Oh, you _better_ not be serious, Kakashi!"

"_What?_"

"And, just like if I don't like you at all, they will be sent back to the Academy for another year of schooling," Kakashi said over their exclamations, "where they will also be carefully re-evaluated on whether or not they should be a shinobi at all at that point, or if they should be held back _again_."

"Dammit Kakashi, you can't just send us back just because you don't-" Naruto stopped in mid-yell, blinking rapidly. He frowned in thought. It took several moments, but then his eyes lit up.

Kakashi grinned to himself. The class dunce figured it out. Good. Weird – after all, what happened to the class academic, or the class heartthrob/fighter/dreamboat/honor student? – but good. He'd threatened to do the same when he was saying how he would send them back just because he didn't like them. If he was willing to do the same if they didn't get a bell, then that was saying that he wouldn't like them if they didn't get a bell. And since it was absolutely ridiculous for a jounin-_sensei_ not to like someone simply because they couldn't pass one test, that meant that something they did or did not do during the test would cause him to not like them. And the list for the Do category was rather short, if one thought about it:

Impress him with skills in taijutsu, ninjutsu. Finish test quickly, well before the time limit is up. Show him things he hadn't seen before. Show him how well they worked together, as a team, in order to bring him down.

After all, the only way they would be able to get hold of the bells would be if they worked together, anyway. He knew that Naruto had put a few traps up around the area – he _had_ checked the place out before he showed up, after all – and even though they were extensive – there were around thirty, all in all, and some looked like they set off others – they shouldn't hinder him too much. Sakura couldn't do much at all – book-smarts were basically worthless on a battlefield, aside from following instructions for making a trap or some such knowledge like that. And Sasuke, while plenty more skilled in fighting than the others, would pose little more than a distraction from his reading.

Kakashi thought all of this in his head, in the span of only a few seconds. During those few seconds, Sakura had let out another shout with the swearwords of a seven-year-old, and Sasuke had managed to make his childish, angry frown turn back to the broody, melancholy slash shape that his lips usually held, and Naruto was just looking at him, waiting for what he was going to say next, his eyes dancing with anticipation.

"The time limit," Kakashi said loudly, speaking over them once again and gesturing to the ticking clock, "has already begun counting down. You now have one hour and fifty-nine minutes left."

Naruto vanished, leaving Sakura and Sasuke, who looked remarkably dumbfounded. It was a very stark change from their expressions of aloof anger and constipated rage of less than a minute ago.

Kakashi made a little shooing motion with his hands. When they didn't move, he fluttered his fingers a little instead. "Be gone with you," he said. They started, blinked once, and disappeared. Kakashi raised a visible eyebrow in interest and raised his fingers up to his eye. He wiggled them again.

"_Damn_, I'm good," he said.

* * *

Naruto was grinning like a loon. Or maybe like a fox. Perhaps even like a monkey, although that sort of smile was rarely attested too, as monkeys are not the most mischievous of animals, so the metaphor would not be very good. Whatever way he was grinning, though, he was doing it with that aforementioned mischief.

Finally, after almost _ten hours_ of waiting – although a portion of that was spent sleeping, to be completely honest – he was going to get to set off Training Ground Hell. He had spent the entire evening, plus a few hours after midnight, changing the area into a veritable minefield, and had lost his left sandal, sock, and his orange jacket in the process. His hitai-ate, still hanging around his neck – he idly wondered if he was ever going to get around to putting it up on his forehead, where it was meant to be – had gained a layer of mud and another of ash and soot. His pants were practically destroyed, filled with tears and cuts and spotted with blood and burns and mud and grass stains. The right sleeve of his white undershirt had been torn off, when he had needed a rag to clean off his face and hands when they got sweaty or dirty.

He was high as a kite.

And he was going to pass this test, and he was going to make damn sure that Sakura and Sasuke passed it as well, because you couldn't very well have a team with only two people. Stupid Kakashi – anyone who gave the Bell Test a few moments of hard, serious consideration would be able to figure out that what he was really looking for, what he was really trying to stress, was teamwork.

He did wonder why he was the first one to figure it out, though. Seriously – Sakura was easily the smartest, laterally thinking, and Sasuke was more intelligent than himself, he would freely admit to. Two people with more smarts than him, but he was the first to get it? Talk about weird. Oh well; he wasn't about to look a gift-horse in the mouth…which was a really, really weird saying he'd heard a few times that basically meant, from what he'd gathered, 'don't think too much about cool things that happen, just accept them as cool things and move on'.

Anyway, Training Ground Hell. Shino had said earlier that he had to tweak number twenty-eight – also known as Dodge These Shuriken and Win the Prize – a little bit so it could properly set off number thirty-four, The Prize, so that would be his first order of business. He'd leave the rest of the touch-ups to his clones.

A hand seal later and five Kage Bunshin were racing off in different directions. Naruto himself changed his course toward the twenty-eighth trap, which was, luckily, towards where he had seen Sakura and Sasuke disappear to…although he doubted that they were together anymore; he was willing to bet that Sasuke excused himself from her first chance he got, so he had sent one of the bunshin to find and inform Sakura. They both needed to know the goal of this little challenge.

He idly wondered just how long it was going to take for him to convince them that they had to work together. He gave it a little over ten minutes each.

* * *

Kakashi, if asked, would say that he was marginally surprised. Immediately after, he would backpeddle and correct himself, saying that he was not quite surprised enough for it to be called 'surprised'. He didn't _do_ such strong emotions; too much trouble.

He was mostly totally-not-surprised because of Naruto's actions. One would normally expect the loudmouth little genin to stand his ground and attempt to duke it out one-on-one with the jounin. Stupid as that would be, it would have made sense with how Naruto had been before he graduated: always trying to prove himself, full of hot air (among other things), and really, really not thinking things through at all.

Now, however…well, something drastic must have happened between then and now. There were several events competing for that spot, at the moment: his finding out about the Kyuubi, his almost dying, his almost seeing Iruka dying, having someone he genuinely trusted betray him so easily (and sadistically), his graduating, his learning of Kage Bunshin…well, let's face it, there was quite a few things that could have prompted this change in his attitude.

He was thinking things out now. He wasn't rushing into situations half-cocked. He wasn't letting his emotions completely control his actions. He was actually using strategy, from what he'd seen of some of the traps that had been set up – some were made specifically to set off others if they missed their original target. It was impressive. Kakashi had a distinct feeling that this Naruto, this new version of the blonde prankster, was going to be much more valuable than the old one could have ever been.

So…what to do now? He couldn't go after Naruto first – it just wouldn't be fair, at least not until he started activating his traps. There was Sakura, but he didn't really want to pick her off first. Even _he_ had a heart. Kind of. Maybe half of one.

So, Sasuke it was.

Kakashi wondered how much of a fight he'd put up, and cast an eye – really, of _course_ he only cast _an_ eye; he couldn't very well cast both eyes, considering one was covered by a two-centimeter-thick piece of chakra-enhanced metal, with a number of special seals etched onto the back to make it an effective barrier between the hidden Sharingan and the rest of the world – about the clearing. If he was right, Sasuke was the one most likely to hang out nearby. Normally he would bet on Naruto, but with him being all _different_ now, that bet would no longer be a safe one. His eye stopped at a point near one of the trees.

Oh? What was this?

* * *

The first Kage Bunshin drifted silently along a small trail through the trees, his bright blue eyes darting about. He was, at the moment, the closest of the six to the open clearing of the training area, and thus, the closest of the six to Kakashi. While fairly sure that the Hatake wouldn't go after him, or any of his counterparts, first, just the fact that it could be a possibility was enough to set the clone on edge.

He had been given two assignments to do before Operation: Training Ground Hell went down – told to him in the brief second that he and the original creator had made eye contact before they split up. Number one was to re-arm and readjust trap number four – the one that the Inuzuka had set off earlier – and number two was to double-back around the clearing to check for any other mishaps that needed to be taken care of. Even something as simple (and adorable) as a bunny rabbit could have set one of their lesser traps off, and it was crucial that every single one be in working condition for the grand finale.

He continued on, silent and serious.

* * *

Sasuke was silent. He was serious. He was silent _and _serious. He was no longer a genin, trying to pass a test to be accepted. He was on a mission. He was on a hunt, crouching just outside of the clearing, watching for the enemy. He was kneeling…directly next to a rather obvious trap of Naruto's. He glanced at it, and twitched when he saw a mewling kitten tumbling inside the small catapult-esque contraption. There was a large cup of water suspended directly above it.

He didn't like cats.

He had bad experiences with cats.

And Naruto was an evil, evil little bastard. Throwing a wet cat on someone? Talk about insanely cruel. He was rather glad the idiot had never decided to prank him.

Oh, right. Kakashi. Silent. Hunting.

He cleared his throat and began his inner monologue anew.

He was a silent hunter, his kunai bared like claws, his entire body coiled like a spring and ready to strike. He was a predator, waiting for its prey to reveal itself. When it did, he would attack; he would leap forward and tear it apart with his knives, with his claws. He would-

"Hi, Sasuke."

The Uchiha made a strangled, quiet sort of yell and spun around, his kunai – bared like claws, you know – lashing out towards the unexpected voice. There was a soft "Oi!", followed by a "Stop flailing, you idiot!" and a "Calm down, dammit, calm down!". When everything settled, Sasuke was being pinned on the ground and Naruto was squatting in front of him, looking him seriously in the eye.

"Are you done wigging out?" Naruto asked him pleasantly. Sasuke glared at him.

"Uchiha don't 'wig out'," he responded haughtily. "And they do not stoop to using the words of the commoners like 'wig out'."

"You've used it twice already," the blonde pointed out. "Now listen up, because I have something to tell you…"

* * *

Speaking of twice, Kage Bunshin number two was fulfilling his given requirements, which encompassed retracing the path that Umino Iruka-sensei created when he chased after the original creator in order to reset any of the traps that had been set off – first, foremost, and most important being trap number thirteen: Orange and Golden Shower. It was absolutely critical that some of that paint/silly putty/gorilla glue/bubblegum amalgam make its way into Hatake Kakashi's hair. If it didn't, then trap number fifty-two-point-five wouldn't be able to correctly take hold, which would also adversely affect number seventy, and, in the very end, number ninety-four.

His fingers lingered over a worn patch of bark on a tree limb, and he nodded his head in satisfaction. He was still on the right trail. He was about to start moving again when a shine of metal a few meters in front of him caught his attention. He raised an eyebrow and jumped over to it.

Huh…the original creator didn't recall Umino Iruka-sensei throwing kunai.

Then a small bug, which had been all but invisible on the dark grey surface, spread its wings and shot off the weapon, calling the clone's attention to it for a second before it ultimately disappeared into the trees.

He blinked once and let a small smirk flit across his lips.

_A form burst through the brush and Naruto was throwing the knife before he realized who it was. It slammed into the tree directly beside the boy's head and he shrieked, lurching to the side and narrowly missing another one of the his traps – the only thing that prevented a fate of silly-putty being plastered over his entire head were two sets of hands that firmly halted his progress towards the ground._

The Aburame of Team 8, apparently, had decided that the kunai had needed to be returned.

Interesting.

He shook his head, deciding to let the original creator think over the actions of his fellow genin, pocketed the kunai, and took off again through the trees. He would deliver it to the original creator in a few minutes.

* * *

"_Sasuke-kun!"_

Oh, this was bad! Where had he gone?

"_Sasuke-kun!"_ she hissed again.

They had run from the clearing together, but after half a minute of jumping through the trees, he suddenly disappeared and she didn't know where he had gone. She stopped immediately – almost in mid-jump, too, which almost resulted in her barreling straight into a particularly large branch – and tried to look for clues, for signs that might have pointed her in a general direction; scraped-off bark, torn branches and twigs, ripped leaves, footprints on the grass below. Nothing had helped; either he was especially skilled in not leaving tell-tale signs of a trail, or she was just that bad at tracking.

Needless to say, the second thing didn't really improve her self-esteem much, so she decided to go with the first option. It made more sense anyways; it was Sasuke-kun, after all, and the Rookie of the Year would be better than other ninja at all sorts of things.

Wait! What if Kakashi-sensei had grabbed him? Kakashi-sensei was far more capable than them, even Sasuke-kun, and would be able to kidnap him without a trace!

Oh no, oh no, oh _no! "Sasuke-kun!"_ Sakura whispered louder, more insistently, more panicked and alarmed. What would Kakashi-sensei _do_ to him if he had captured him? What if Sasuke fought him?

Oh, it would be _very_ cool and Sasuke-like, she knew; he'd show of a number of cool and impressive moves and maneuvers that nobody had ever seen or expected, and he'd certainly keep Kakashi-sensei on his toes longer than her or Naruto, but eventually he'd be beaten. A part of her rebelled (very, very loudly) against that thought, but she knew it was true. Amazing or not, Sasuke-kun was a genin, and Kakashi-sensei a jounin. The difference was far too great.

But what if Kakashi-sensei completely humiliated Sasuke-kun? He wouldn't deserve that! He hadn't deserved it when he had done it earlier, when Sasuke-kun had wanted to know just what the heck the Hatake was talking about. Sure, she had to admit, maybe the way he said it hadn't come out the best, but that was no reason, no reason at all to _sit _on him, and, and, and treat him like he was dirt, or a child who had gone too far when yelling at his parents. But if they fought, and Kakashi-sensei beat him really easily? Oh, how Sasuke-kun would be hurt! He needed her! He needed her to be there when he fell, so she could help him back up again!

"_Sasuke-kun!"_

And then a hand fell upon her shoulder.

Sakura yelled the moment she felt its touch. She already had a kunai in her hand and was spinning around, ready to attack who she assumed was Kakashi-sensei, when she caught sight of orange. Unfortunately, this did very little to deter her, as she knew that Kakashi-sensei was also slathered in orange paint, possibly mixed with something else. It wasn't until she saw her assailant's face - with the sapphire-blue eyes, the three scars on each cheek, and the sunset-yellow hair – that it all registered in her mind that this was Naruto, not Kakashi-sensei, but at that point it was a bit late since the kunai clenched in her fist was already racing for the arm that had just detached itself from her shoulder.

She breathed a silent sigh of relief when he managed to twist out of the way to avoid the strike, though she wasn't about to admit it anytime soon. Instead she fell into her more classic reaction when faced with the blonde: misplaced anger.

"_Naruto!"_ she snarled. "I could have killed you!"

"Nah," he replied with an unconcerned wave of his hand. She growled dangerously, but he didn't seem to hear it. "Believe me when I say that you couldn't. Not technically, anyway."

"I almost _stabbed you_, Naruto. It may not have killed you, but you would have gotten hurt, maybe very badly!"

"Only for a second or two," he said in a placating sort of voice. "In the end, it wouldn't really be a big concern for me, Sakura-chan."

Her jaw clenched tightly as she ground her teeth together. She didn't have time for Naruto and his idiocy, and she didn't want to waste the time wondering why he was being so dismissive. "I have to find Sasuke-kun," she said, perhaps harsher than she had meant to let it out as. She turned to leave, to leap away to another branch to keep tracking the Last Uchiha, but his hand came back down on her shoulder again.

This time she was angry, she didn't have a kunai in her hand, and she knew it was Naruto – which changed everything.

Full of righteous female fury, Sakura spun and slammed her fist directly into his face. She barely registered the crack as he flew off the branch, a small shot of blood escaping his nose.

She didn't really know what she had been expecting – heck, she barely meant to do _that_, it was just…it was almost a natural reaction by now – be it a loud curse and a rough landing with the ground, be it a joke with ketchup as fake blood, or be it him managing to recover quickly and catching himself on the next branch down. But if she were to be asked, she would admit that she really was not in any way expecting what happened.

Naruto flew back about half a meter before he opened his eyes. They seemed darker than usual. His eyes met her own, and he grimaced and said, like the last word of a martyr, "Seriously?"

And then he exploded in a plume of white smoke.

* * *

Kage Bunshin Three had met up with the original creator near Sasuke's hiding place and had assisted in restraining the boy; they both knew that there was a very low chance of him listening otherwise. He listened in silence as the boy was told of the nature of the Bell Test, and he kept quiet when the boy did not at first believe what was being said. It did not concern either version, the original or the clone, very much, because they had been expecting as much.

So he stayed silent, he stayed still, and he waited.

"…I am afraid of saying this out loud, as it probably goes against some natural order, but…what you said does actually make sense."

"Really?"

Sasuke shot him a look. "Yes," he said. "Is that a problem?"

"No, not at all," Naruto replied, grinning. "I just thought I'd have to talk – or, to be more realistic, we would have to argue – for another few minutes before you admitted that what I said is in the ballpark of rational. I thought it'd take five more to convince you that I was right."

"I'm not convinced you're right." He sounded affronted, as if the very idea was ridiculous. Just admitting that he was making sense was bad enough.

"I know." Naruto shrugged. "But I still have five minutes to change that." He opened his mouth to say something else, but it seemed to die in his throat as his face froze. His eyes blinked rapidly for a few moments, and then he relaxed.

Sasuke was left wondering just what the fuck that was about. He was about to voice that thought, only with far more dignity and far less curse words, when he was interrupted by Naruto letting out a curse of his own.

"Shit," he sighed. "Should've just done it myself…" Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "Heh, um…" The class dunce rubbed his neck nervously. "I'll…I'll be right back." And he took a step to the side and vanished into the trees.

Sasuke, surprisingly, waited. He didn't wait patiently, really, or happily – never, ever – but he didn't attempt (too hard) to get out of his captor's clutches. He squirmed a bit, and may have whined pathetically once or twice, and perhaps tried to roll over a few times and crawl to his feet, but other than that he was amazingly complacent. He was in roughly the same shape when Naruto burst back into the small clearing, shaking his head and sending loose blonde hair flopping around. The dirtied hitai-ate, still hung around his neck, knocked into his collarbone several times before it settled, leaving black marks of ash and earth on his white undershirt.

"Back," Naruto said unnecessarily. "Where were we?"

"Well," Sasuke replied evenly, "I was just about to ask you why you froze like you did, so I suppose we should pick up there." Naruto nodded. "So, why did you freeze and run off so suddenly?"

Naruto gave an easy – too easy – laugh and pasted a weak smile across his face.

"Would you believe me if I told you I have seizures?"

Sasuke was silent for a moment. "If it weren't at such a suspicious and bizarre moment…probably."

The blonde shrugged again. "I remembered something," he said in a dismissive voice.

"Right."

Naruto, perhaps hearing the slight edge his teammate's voice had taken, explained a little further. But only a little. "I remembered that, no matter what, Sakura always finds some reason to punch me."

"And that is relevant to anything because…" He was starting to get annoyed with the deliberate question-dodging; it wasn't like the blonde, either. He had always been up-front about anything under the sun – since when did he start being secretive?

Or, a better question: what did he have to keep a secret?

"Because she punches harder than someone with two of their Gates open."

"And that is relevant _because?"_ Sasuke growled.

Naruto cocked his head to the side, then grinned impishly. "Eh," he said, "you'll find out in a few minutes."

"Naruto, I swear…"

"Well, you shouldn't. It's a fucking horrible habit to drop into."

Glare.

"Okay, fine," he gave in in exasperation. "But I'm only doing this so you won't be stunned speechless from the awesomeness of it when we attack Kakashi and I spam 'em." His gaze moved from the Uchiha's face up over his shoulder. He jerked his head slightly, and instantly, the weight that was keeping Sasuke pinned to the ground was removed. The pale-skinned boy grunted as he pushed himself up, standing on two slightly-shaking legs. He stumbled for a moment before regaining his balance and sent another glare at Naruto for good measure. Naruto looked oddly pleased with himself as he told him, "Now turn around."

Sasuke, with one last suspicious look, turned on his heel. He was half-expecting the blonde to bop him in the back of the head and then run off, or blow a raspberry in his ear and dodge the next swing, or perhaps – the most horrible option of all – jump onto his back and demand a piggy-back ride.

What he was most certainly not expecting – hell, seeing Itachi standing in front of him would have made a significant more amount of sense at the time – was an exact replica of the smiling blonde he had just turned his back on.

He jerked back in surprise. His record of events would later edit out that little slip-up. Mass quantities of confusion overloading his mind, he spun around, only to see the same face grinning at him. He snapped his head to the side and looked over his shoulder. Still the same face.

What the fuck?

"Naruto," he said in as calm a voice as he could muster – which, in all honesty, was not very calm in the slightest. "Explain," he ordered firmly.

"Absolutely," the Naruto that was currently in front of him said, the grin sliding off his lips. "You know that there are different kinds of bunshin, right?"

"Of course I did," came the condescending tone. "Regular bunshin, then there are variations of each element, except the air: Earth, Fire, Water, Electricity. There are also Mud, Wood, and some shinobi have speculated of Metal Bunshin." Naruto nodded vigorously.

"This is another kind," Naruto said, indicating the Naruto standing behind Sasuke. "It's called Kage Bunshin." Sasuke scowled.

"Shadow Clone?"

He had never heard of it before…could it be…? Could this jutsu be something that was contained in the scroll that the idiot had begun carrying with him everywhere he went? The one that had impudently went and insulted him when he tried to look through it?

He didn't know, but it certainly warranted further thought.

"Yeah. Personally, I think that the regular ones should be called Kage, and _these_ kinds," and he indicated the other Naruto again, "should be just Bunshin, but apparently some idiots decided that that didn't make any sense, despite it making perfect sense, so…" He shrugged helplessly.

Sasuke stared at him for a number of moments, then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He slowly let it out, then opened his eyes and looked hard at the blonde. "I'll ask later, you'll tell me later; for the moment, we are doing nothing but wasting time. Do you have a plan of action?"

"A 'plan of action'?" Naruto let out a small chuckle. "Seriously?" A grin grew on his face once again as he spun on his heel and began to walk away, motioning for the Uchiha to follow. "I _always_ have something up my sleeve." He shook his right arm – tan, dirty, and very bare of any such clothing article – and added, "Even when I don't have any sleeves to spare."

He laughed again as he and Sasuke both leapt into the trees and disappeared.

* * *

The newest Naruto created made his way towards the dissipation-point of the previous Fourth, the one that had been 'popped' by the original creator's pink-haired teammate. He had been endowed with extra chakra, hopefully enough to keep him from 'popping' from one strike like his predecessor had done. It should be plenty, though, given that this amount allowed him to sustain several two-to-three-centimeter deep kunai wounds and stay around for another four or so minutes afterward, as had been proved in the previous night's tests.

The previous night had been most fortuitous, and not just in the creation of so many traps and calibrating them correctly; no, there had also been plenty of experimentation with the Kage Bunshin jutsu. It had been obscenely revealing of their abilities, and their limits. The original creator had been very pleased with the results.

Kage Bunshin four spotted a flash of pink and red and bolted forward, his injected memories of the previous encounter with the girl plus the instructions from the original creator bouncing at the edge of his thoughts. He could not screw this up. She needed to hear him out, and she needed to believe him. The original creator knew that, even with the Prank, he would not be able to take down the silver-haired jounin. He had said that he needed the other two's help; and, even if he did not believe it, or if he could not understand why the original creator would _need_ the pink-hair, as he'd professed to, he would serve out his assignment. It was what he had been created to do, and to ignore the very purpose of one's life would be to live without purpose.

And living without purpose, well…that's just plain wrong.

* * *

Kakashi hummed to himself as he looked around.

It wasn't really a thoughtful hum, or a disbelieving hum, or even a questioning hum – it was more like a 'I feel like I should say something here except I don't really have anything to say right now so I'll settle for a hum' hum.

Sasuke was nowhere near the perimeter of the clearing. Surprising, to say the most. But all that meant was that Naruto had gotten to him first.

He would have gone looking for Sakura next, on his failing of finding Sasuke, if he hadn't known that Naruto would have also found her and ferreted her off to wherever he had taken the Uchiha. He was probably keeping them in some little hidey-hole, safe and sound until he needed them – even if he didn't need them. Because even if his little trap scheme worked – which it wouldn't, by the way – and Kakashi got himself all bound and gagged and whatnot, the other two would still have to play some part in the process in order for him to pass them, and Naruto knew it. So, at some point, all three of his maybe-could-be-students would have to come in and join the party.

Kakashi shook his head as he laughed quietly to himself.

Who would have guessed that the Academy's 'Eternal Dead Last' would be the one to provide the most trouble?

Umino, maybe. Probably. Okay, so that blasted teacher almost definitely knew, and Kakashi thought it quite possible that he had given his student a little pep talk beforehand, giving the blonde idiot permission to go all-out for the Bell Test. No one had ever seen Naruto's 'all-out', Kakashi was sure. For being a prankster and a hellion, everything he had ever done had been small-time, aside from a choice few pranks that revealed a far deeper sadistic streak then most people would have guessed at.

Kakashi was starting to grow wary. Maybe he should have taken them to a different Training Ground before he started the test, somewhere where the blonde _hadn't_ had all day to set up traps.

But!

He relaxed. Because he had the upper hand in this whole situation, no matter what Naruto managed to pull. Some of that hand was composed of the fact that he was a jounin and the three going against him were not, but the majority of it was not. The majority was something completely different. Although he was sure that Naruto had something extra up his sleeve, too, the little dunce.

Still, no amount of 'extra' could bring his maybe-could-be-team up to his level. Not a chance.

None at all.

* * *

The final bunshin of the kage quintet crept silently back into the clearing. He'd been watching for the better part of ten minutes, long enough to see the jounin wander around for a little while before picking something up, laughing to himself, and trekking away on the path to the KIA Memorial.

As soon as the man was out of the range of vision, he slid out of his hiding place and made his way over to a small section of grass. Carefully, he slid his fingers in a rectangle over top of it, about one meter long and half a meter wide. Once that was accomplished, he flattened his right hand and dug it into one of the box's corners. The grass came up easily – as it should, seeing how it had been dug up last night – and he tugged it away from the newly-revealed hole.

The hole had six wires stretching width-wise across the top, and was holding some sort of substance – one that should have smelled very, very badly, but the odor was mostly covered by the earth – inside. It was not his job to concern himself with the way it smelled, faint as it was.

He took hold of one of the wires and pulled, hard. It snapped out of the hole, and the other wires came up with it, uprooting a small amount of earth and sending it into the puddle of muck below. A small drop splashed up and smeared against his cheek, and he wrinkled his nose. It _didn't_ smell very good at all, when it ceased being surrounded by so much dirt. He tossed the long length of wire aside and scraped slightly-moist dirt from the side of the wall. He packed small outcroppings onto the sides with care, eight total: three down each length, and one on each width. With that done he took hold of the grass-carpet once again and moved it back over the hole, setting it on top of the ledges he had created. He made sure that the entire thing was completely covered before he deemed his job good enough and moved away. It looked exactly as it had before he pulled it up.

Excellent.

He grabbed the wire and carefully wrapped it around his arm. His first task completed, he stood up and moved back to the treeline. Next up…

His eyes flickered over to trap forty-nine: Sexy Kitten in the Shower, and he smirked. He could just barely make out the little feline still moving about in the bag, and the bucket was still secured firmly above it.

He liked cats. He had good experiences with cats.

He was very tempted to go and cuddle it one last time, before its pleasant mewling and innocent tumbling was interrupted by a very rude and very large splash of water and a forced leap through the air, but he had other things to do. If there was still time after everything finished, and he was still alive, he would spend some quality time with Ranran. One of the clones had named her last night. She was awesome, and so full of fluffy, adorable, kitty goodness.

He shook his head and schooled his expression into one of concentration.

Right. He had more shit to do. Next up, finishing touches to trap ten and, just to wax poetic over everything, he was to end with trap one; the end of the beginning of the end, or something like that.

"Man…" he grumbled. "Isn't there anyone that can stand _not_ to do this damned clichéd theatrical dramatic suspense bullshit?"

The question went unanswered – something that was much more a blessing than a curse at the time. After all, if he _had_ received a response - any response, that is, aside from a muffled kitty-noise from Ranran, should she decide to add her input – it would mean that he was very much not alone in the clearing, and that would be bad, especially if it was the disturbingly-cheery voice of the jounin. That would be very bad, as it would disrupt the plan and make him rather unable to set off TGH (Training Ground Hell).

He jumped into the branches of the tree just above him, and from there leapt to another a few meters away. Hidden in the branches lay trap ten, a slightly-modified crossbow; the bolt it held was fired by having the small catch on the back pulled sharply, which in turn would pull the trigger; it was number nine's job to hit the catch, which shot a number of altered senbon needles up into the air at a sixty-ish-degree angle and into the clearing. The crossbow was aimed at a tree across the clearing.

He unwound the wire from his arm and, with a quick swipe of a kunai, cut it into two smaller pieces. He shoved one into his pocket and held the other tight. As quickly as he could, he tied it between trap ten's catch and its trigger, so that it would fire when the catch was hit. He removed the bolt and tested it, satisfied when the catch snapped up and the trigger depressed, slamming the ejector forward. Nodding to himself, he reset the trap and placed the bolt back in its place, taking care not to disrupt the explosive note wrapped around its shaft.

He gave the crossbow a parting pat and leapt back out of the tree and back into the clearing. He was less than two paces away from trap one – dubbed, due to the seemingly-random suggestion that Irons had given last night, 'Numbah Nigel Uno' – when a chill went down his spine. He froze in mid-step and slowly, very slowly, turned his head towards the entrance of the clearing.

The voice of one Hatake Kakashi chimed like a death toll, chilling for all its warmth and happiness, "Well, hello there."

* * *

I'm here and back again, and I know you all love me for it - because, seriously, if you're willing to read over fifty thousand words without the story moving more than a few days, you're dedicated, and you like it, and you are **_eating out of the palm of my hand_**. *evil laughter*

I was originally going to stop where Kakashi says, "...the Bell Test.", but then I realized that I told you that the Bell Test was going to START in this chapter, and it wouldn't be fair to all of you to shove it back to the next update. So I just made this chapter extra long; it's almost the length of 2 of my regular chapters. So I am TOTALLY expecting double the normal reviews for this thing (hint: I usually have about 11 or 12 reviews per chapter. Now use that big brain of yours to move your hand and your fingers to make the mouse move, and make the little arrow on your screen go down and CLICK that little review button. Hint. Hint.). No, I don't really care. But it would be nice.

Hint.

There isn't a whole lot to say about this chapter, to be honest. Sorry about the Pranksters not showing up here (having flashbacks to chapter 5), but there wasn't really anywhere for me to put them. I'll try to put them in the next chapter, but no guarantees (though I really hope that they'll show up - it's not really up to me, in the end. It's up to MY FINGERS! *evil laughter, evil finger-wiggle*).

I'll leave you guys here, hope you liked the chapter, and I'll see you next update (hopefully in about two weeks).

(oh, look at that. There is a "Review" button right here. \/ ... or maybe here? \/ ...it depends on how big your window is, doesn't it?)


	8. Chapter 8

The Marauders _ a Naruto fanfiction by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

Chapter Eight

* * *

Naruto glared at himself.

"Idiot," he said. Sasuke snorted back a laugh. "Shut up, Bastard."

"You do know, Naruto, that it's unhealthy for you to talk to yourself," Hatake Kakashi pointed out.

Naruto looked over at the terrifying jounin and said, "Not when I'm berating myself, Kakashi." He sent another venomous glare at Kage Bunshin number five. "And _this_ idiot," he continued, jerking his head towards the copy, "deserves it. Seriously, are you _retarded?"_

"I didn't-" the other Naruto started before he was brutally cut off.

"-You were supposed to wait until you were _sure _he was gone! As in _absolutely positive!"_ Naruto yelled. "_Not_ as in 'oh, I can't see him anymore, so he must not be able to see _me_ anymore'!" He fisted his hands and pressed them to his forehead as he growled in agitation. "Now our possible-sensei is standing right _there-_"he jabbed an accusing finger at Kakashi "-and, even _better,_ he's hearing everything we're saying!"

"Well, that's really your own damn fault, isn't it?" the Kage Bunshin roared right back. "_I_ wasn't the idiot who started blabbing everything we thought of! I just made a mistake!"

"You call this a _mistake?_ This is a little bigger than just a mistake, you incompetent twit!"

"Fuck you, you stupid bastard!"

Naruto sputtered for a minute before replying, in an incredulous tone, like he couldn't believe that he had just been blatantly insulted by an exact duplicate of himself, "You can't go insult the guy who brought you into existence!"

"I can if he's _me!_ And apparently, I'm an 'incompetent twit'! Asshole!"

"This is all incredibly amusing," Kakashi jumped in, sounding _very_ bored by the whole thing, "but do you think that we could get back to, you know, _me?"_

The Narutos turned as one and screamed "NO!" before snapping their respective angry glares back to each other and growling dangerously.

Sasuke had managed to shift his positioning since he and the real Naruto had burst into the clearing a few minutes ago, and ended up standing next to Kakashi as they witnessed the by-play between the two blondes. He leaned over and whispered, "Do you remember which one was the original?"

"Depends," Kakashi replied, completely unfazed by the fact that he was standing next to an enemy, at least for the duration of the Bell Test. "Was the one with you the real one or was the one standing here first the real one?"

"…dammit, that's a good question."

Kakashi 'hmm'ed in thought. Then, cupping a hand to his mask, he called loudly, "Naruto! Which one of you is the real one?"

"I am!"

"_He_ is!"

Both of them pointed to the one standing on the right. Kakashi turned and eye-smiled at Sasuke, who also had something that looked suspiciously like the beginnings of a smile turning one corner of his lips. "Voila," he said.

"Wait a minute!" the Naruto on the right yelled, sounding as if he had reached some sort of epiphany. "I'm the real one!" He glared at the clone with a vindictive satisfaction. "I can poof you if you don't shut the hell up!"

"So go ahead," the clone challenged, getting right up into the original's face. He shoved him once and snarled, "Poof me. Poof me!" He shoved him again. "Poof me!"

"You-" Naruto got shoved again "-motherfucker, if you don't-" Another shove, and he stumbled back a few steps. He right himself, and bared his teeth as he continued heatedly, "Dammit, you dumbass Bunshin, cut that shit out or _so help me,_ I'll-"

"Yeah? Yeah?" the clone cut him off, giving a very un-Naruto sneer. "You'll _what?_ You're gonna poof me?" Shove. "If you're gonna poof me, then _do it_ already and quit being so friggin' stupid!"

"It's astounding how easily Naruto can piss himself off, isn't it?" Kakashi muttered to the genin beside him.

"I don't think he pisses _other_ people off this easily," Sasuke replied quietly.

"Not most," Kakashi agreed. He paused, then added, "Perhaps the Uchiha, when they were still acting as the police force in Konoha." Sasuke scowled at the perky smile that he was being given. "Oh, don't be like that." He gave the frowny-face a jovial punch on the shoulder. Unfortunately, Kakashi wasn't all that great at thinking about things, and as such failed to register how much strength was actually behind his supposed-to-be-friendly shoulder-slug; the result was Sasuke being sent to the ground. "Oops," he said. He very quickly forgot about what he had just done and was soon looking at the back-and-forth between the two blondes once more.

Sasuke glared at him and was just about to give a very witty and biting retort – provided one came to mind within the next millisecond or two, before the chance to do so was missed completely – when something caught his attention. The look of concentration that suddenly snapped onto his face was akin to a cat locking eyes on a dancing piece of string.

_God_, he hated cats.

Above his head, less than a meter away, hung two very shiny, very vulnerable bells. They were tied to the belt wrapped around the man's waist, and they _ching-a-ching_-ed when he moved around. He looked around them, hard as it was to remove his gaze from them, at Kakashi. The jounin was back to looking at the squabbling idiots with some (low) amount of interest and was emanating a vague, yet smug, sense of amusement.

"Why the hell would you _want _me to poof you?" Naruto asked loudly, balking back from the advancing mirror-image.

"Because then I wouldn't have to _deal_ with you!"

"But you're _me!_ You're telling me that you don't want to deal with _yourself?"_

"Well I _guess I am!"_

"You have some _serious_ mental problems!"

"You're telling that to _yourself,_ asshole!"

"Strange as it is – I don't care! Because apparently I don't really like myself!"

"Why haven't you taken pity on yourself and just poofed me already?"

"I have _no _idea, but it sounded like a damn good idea _then_, and it sounds like a damn good idea _now!"_

Sasuke levered himself up onto his arms and shifted his legs slightly so they were underneath his body, taught and ready to spring. Those bells…his eyes flickered over to Naruto. This could be considered some form of teamwork, couldn't it? To have one member act as a distraction in order to give the main fighter opportunity to attack the target? And if Kakashi didn't agree with that reasoning, well…they could sic Naruto on him until he _did_ agree. The man couldn't last forever against _that_ kind of torture.

His gaze fixated back onto the bells.

No, that didn't sound nearly important enough…

His gaze fixated back onto the Bells – capitalized, for that extra boost of significance that they so deserved – and he slowly, slowly, _slowly_ began lifting his right hand towards them. Every second or so, he stopped and checked the attentions of Kakashi; the man's head never moved away from Naruto's direction, and his eye stayed firmly forward. Slowly, slo-o-o-owly…

Just before his fingers brushed the Bells, something he couldn't see at all slapped the top of his hand. He drew it back to his chest in a sharp motion and held back a faint hiss of pain. His eyes shot back up to Kakashi. He hadn't moved, but…Sasuke was damn sure he was pleased with himself, and was singing some off-key rendition of some oldies song inside his head.

Staring up at him suspiciously, Sasuke raised his stinging hand up once more to try and grab at the Bells. And again, there was a slap to his hand despite there being no movement on Kakashi's part. Sasuke looked over at Naruto, then back at Kakashi. And he frowned.

His eyes fell to the long, thin hand that came to rest almost directly at his eye-level. All of the fingers were curled into a loose fist except for the index finger, which was raised (or lowered, depending on your point of view) and slowly, slowly went back and forth, in the classic 'ah, ah, ah, you shouldn't do that' gesture.

His scowl only deepened. He reached…

Slap.

Reach…

Slap.

Reach…

Slap.

Well, this was getting old.

Reach…

Slap.

Dammit.

* * *

"So what d'you guys wanna do?"

An insulted huff.

"I'm a _girl_, sensei."

"No, see, that's your name, girly. Pay attention now."

"My name is _Ino!"_

"I won't believe you until you show me a birth certificate. Didn't I tell you that yesterday?"

"No!"

"Well, then, I'm telling you now, girly. Good?"

"No, it is _not_ 'good'!"

"Too bad." Sarutobi Asuma turned away from his insufferable female genin and towards his two male counterparts. "How 'bout you two? What'cha wanna do?"

"You're supposed to teach us!"

"Wasn't talking to you anymore, girly. Please stay out of the conversation – boys only, and all that." He raised an eyebrow. "Either of you smoke?"

"We're _twelve!" _Chouji exclaimed in a shocked voice.

"Do they relieve stress?" Shikamaru asked suddenly, the first words he'd said since Asuma had arrived at the Hokage Memorial. He had two fingers to both temples, rubbing them in a counter-clockwise motion in an apparent effort to ward away a headache.

Asuma shrugged. "Some," he said. "But then it goes and makes more problems for you – like _that _– which just goes and makes more stress." He jerked his head towards Ino, rolling his eyes as he did so. "It evens out, for the most part."

"Even," Shikamaru repeated. "Even 'even' sounds too good to be true." He held out an expectant hand towards his sensei.

"Shika!" Chouji chided him. "Smoking's bad for you!"

"How the hell can you be a _ninja_ and _smoke?_ It makes no sense!"

"No, it just means that I have to be even more stealthy and awesome than a normal shinobi," Asuma corrected her, exhaling a stream of smoke. "The cigarettes I smoke are mostly odorless, anyway." A fine deal more expensive than normal, too. Damn things were gonna drive him into living in the streets – or worse, back into his _parents' house_.

"They make you run out of breath easier, the give you _cancer_, they're disgusting, Nara, you're never _ever_ going to get a girlfriend-!"

"I need one?"

"How can you get married if you don't have a girlfriend?" Ino asked him, her expression gobsmacked.

"Well, probably because the person I would be marrying would be a partner, or a fiancé, or a betrothed – not a girlfriend," Shikamaru replied, taking the cancer stick proffered and holding it loosely in between his fingers. Asuma shuffled over and sat next to him. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a pack of matches, offering them to his student. Shikamaru took the box, popped it open, and grabbed a match before handing it back to the man. "Usually by that time, you and your 'significant other' are more than just boyfriend and girlfriend, Ino."

"But you need a girlfriend to _become_ your significant other!" she protested.

"Nope." Shikamaru slid the match over the ground and it lit up with a small pop. He set the cigarette to his lips and held the match up to it. The end sizzled before glowing orange as the paper and other materials burned. Asuma grinned and watched in anticipation, his own cigarette dangling out of one side of the mouth as short puffs of smoke were breathed out the other. The Nara ignored his friend's warning of, "Shika, don't – it's gross and nasty as hell, and it's tons more addictive than pixie sticks!" and just plain didn't pay any attention to Ino's, "Don't you dare smoke that cigarette, Nara!" and drew in a short breath.

Immediately, it felt like fire raced down his throat. He sputtered and coughed as his chest burned, his mouth tasting like ash. He gagged and felt his throat constrict painfully as the burning sensation hit his lungs and came back up. He coughed again and spat what little saliva was left out of his mouth. One hand had come up to rest against his sternum, the cigarette having been thrown to the ground, and it clutched at his fishnet shirt. His other hand was pressing hard against his thigh as he struggled to catch his breath.

Asuma laughed and thumped the Nara on the back a few times. It didn't help. "Not quite to your liking, eh, Pineapple-hair?"

Shikamaru took a deep breath and held it in, determined to ignore the burning that was itching at his throat, and in his lungs. He sputtered a little as another cough wormed its way out from between his lips, and glared hard at his sensei through watery eyes. "No," he ground out, his jaw set firm. He swallowed and coughed some more, spitting a wad of saliva into the grass. Then he glanced over at Ino, who was laughing so hard that tears were forming in the corners of her eyes, and looked down at the cigarette that had fallen to the grass, its tip still glowing orange. He looked back up and added hoarsely, "Not yet."

Asuma grinned.

* * *

"This is getting a little old, don't you think, Sasuke-kun?"

Sasuke glared up at his sensei. It didn't really matter which he was talking about – Naruto's squabbling, or him trying to grab the Bells from Kakashi's belt – because the statement stood true for both of them. But he wasn't about to admit that. Instead, he reached up towards the Bells, only to be foiled once again when his hand was slapped away.

"Yes, Kakashi-sensei," he growled, giving his stinging hand a good shake.

"Not yet," Kakashi said absently, not really paying attention.

Sasuke huffed and looked away. He began to cross his arms in a fit of childish anger, but he managed to catch himself before he completed the motion and looked like a seven-year-old whose mother wouldn't let him have a cookie after dinner. He scowled and let his eyes drift over to the quarreling blondes.

He and Naruto – the real Naruto, as he had found out just a few minutes ago – had been running through the forest to get to the clearing. Naruto had been explaining that another clone was putting the finishing touches on the last few traps, and that he wanted to be there to see it when the same clone set off trap number one – the first of many, many, many, he had said, and he really wanted to say some badass one-liner just before the clone triggered it, so that the whole thing would be epic beyond measure. Then they had burst through the last bit of treeline, only to find that clone quaking in his boots (shoes, sandals, zori, whatever) and staring to their immediate left. They turned and saw Kakashi, and suddenly everything seemed very, very bad.

Kakashi had just eye-smiled, gave a very polite "Hello" and a little wave, and turned his gaze down to the hard-cover novel in his hands. In all its happiness, its light-spirited and friendly nature, and the warm atmosphere it seemed to give, the greeting only served to terrify them to their very cores.

Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on which way you look at it – Naruto broke out of it quick enough when he realized that he could lay all the blame upon his clone, and give himself an outlet for his anger (and fear, but he wasn't about to admit that). Which he did. Loudly.

Which brought them to where they were now.

The only thing that would make it any worse, and put the entire situation on level with one of the circles of Hell, would be if Sakura showed up and started yelling.

"Sasuke-kun!"

Dammit.

Sasuke swore to himself, over and over and over again, and turned his head towards the sounds of the creaking of branches and the slapping of leaves against a body. It was not a second later that an orange-ish blur burst out through the trees, arching (posing) in the air and landing dead center in the middle of the clearing.

_Another_ clone?

He felt an eyebrow rise and looked back at Naruto – the real Naruto.

From what he'd seen, and from what Naruto seemed to be getting at when he said that it would make more sense for them to be called Clones instead of Shadow Clones, the Kage Bunshin that the blonde was able to create seemed to be have an actual solid form, a corporal body instead of just the illusionary trick that regular Bunshin were, without drawing it out from the elements. Solid clones…Sasuke knew that making clones with a solid form was much more chakra-exhausting than the regular, which took only a small amount in order to shift light patterns in the air to create the effect of there being a body. Wood clones, electric clones, fire and water clones, earth clones…they were solid, too, and much more straining than plain old bunshin. But actual solid clones, which most _certainly_ were not the near-mindless drones that came from the elements, who could think and react, who had emotions and got angry, who had opinions about things and didn't feel a need to obey the one that created them…

They were…_fascinating._

"Sasuke-kuuuun!"

A pink form leapt cleanly through the trees – at a much more sedate pace than the hyperactive blonde-haired blur that had preceded her – and, upon catching sight of him, gave an overjoyed squeal and immediately moved in his direction.

"Sasuke-kun, I was so-!" Her voice stopped in mid-sentence. Surprising, to say the least, but not too unexpected, considering she had just caught sight of Kakashi, standing off to one side and (still) keeping a careful eye on the (still) bickering blondes. His head cocked to one side when he heard the abrupt break in her words, and he swiveled his tilted head in her direction.

He waved.

Sakura gave a jerky, unsure wave back. This seemed to satisfy the man, and he turned his attention back to the main subject of interest: a boy arguing with himself.

"Yo, guys!"

And now the Kage Bunshin that had shown up with Sakura had gone and decided to try and make peace between them. Great.

"What the hell do you want?" Clone 1 snarled. Naruto cuffed him over the back of the head and glared at him.

"Stop yelling at him, he didn't do anything to deserve it!"

"He's _you,_ and _you_ deserve it!"

"So give it to me and don't take it out on him – he was gone this entire time!"

"I don't know how many times I have to tell you that you are _the same person!"_

"No, we are not!"

"Just because he's a clone doesn't mean you ain't the same!"

"Hey, guys, can't we calm down a little?"

"Go away, or I'm gonna slam your head into the ground!" barked Clone 1.

It quickly degenerated from there into a three-way argument, complete with frequent bonks on the head, poking each other in the eyes, and frequent exclamations of "you numbskulls".

Kakashi beamed.

After five minutes of the same thing, Sasuke, mildly irritated, looked over at Kakashi and asked, "How much time do we have left, Kakashi-sensei?"

"Not yet!" He took the clock out of whatever sub-universe that he had put it into before and glanced at it. "Depends. How much time did you start with?"

"Two hours," Sasuke replied, a brow arching up his forehead without his conscious consent.

"Ah. Well, then, you would have…" He made a humming noise. "An hour thirty to go." He stowed the clock back into its little pocket in time and turned towards the Uchiha. "Why did you want to know?"

"It would be nice if we could pass this test and get accepted onto your team," Sasuke informed him. "I would rather that we failed because you didn't like us, than failing because we stood around being entertained for the entire test and ran out of time before we even tried."

Kakashi nodded in understanding. "That makes sense, I suppose." He tilted his head towards Naruto. "But then I wouldn't have a live show of the Three Stooges to entertain me. It's almost too good to be true." The fact that he said all of this in a perfectly monotonous voice made Sasuke seriously doubt anything that came out of his mouth.

Sasuke looked over at Naruto again. Black eyes met blue for a moment, just long enough for the blue to flicker over to the treeline and back again, before the blonde broke their gaze, put Clone 2 in a headlock, and yelled at Clone 1 about how he needed to get his mind off that damned kitten.

Sasuke palmed a kunai.

Clone 2 threw his head back, hitting Naruto's nose with a wet crack, sending the original stumbling back and unwittingly releasing his captured clone. His hands had just come up to clutch his face, his eyes screwed shut in pain, when the first clone stepped forward and slammed into the original's torso, throwing him backward and into the treeline.

"Asshole," the clone said, flipping the general location of the original off. There was a brief rustling behind the cover of the trees.

Clone 2 frowned and held up a finger. He opened his mouth, presumably to chastise Clone 1 for his unnecessarily rude language, but he never exactly got the chance to do so. Before he could get a word out, he was interrupted. By a kunai. To the face.

Clone 1 suffered the same fate; a kunai had slammed into his forehead, _through_ the hitai-ate that he had been wearing (correctly, where it was meant to be worn), rocking his head back and falling backwards as his legs crumpled beneath him. They both exploded into white smoke before they even hit the ground.

Sasuke barely thought about the power put behind those kunai before he was throwing one of his own, pivoting on the balls of his feet and swinging his arm in Kakashi's direction. A moment later, three more joined the first. Just before they hit, the silver-haired jounin raised his hard-cover pornographic epic and batted them away as if they were paper balls.

And then a bowling ball rocketed out of the forest, moving as if it had been shot by a cannon.

Of course, it would have been a lot more impressive if it had come close to hitting anything. As it were, though, the peach/red colored sphere emerged into the clearing about six meters away from either fighter (if you could call them that), spinning slightly and sending a deep whistling noise into the air, before being enveloped by the forest on the other side. There was a snap, a crackle, a pop, and then a creaking noise.

At the very moment that creaking noise was heard, two orange forms burst into the clearing. One tackled Sasuke, the other Sakura.

Surprisingly, it was Sakura who would describe the following events as some of the coolest in her life. It was almost in slow motion, she would later say, when her eyes were drawn away from Sasuke-kun and Kakashi-sensei and towards the smudge in the corner of her eye, when that smudge turned out to be Naruto (or perhaps one of his special clones; the clone that had brought her to the clearing had given her a quick rundown of what it was) who wrapped his arms around her waist and forced her down to the ground, when, just as her back met the grass and before any pain was felt from the impact, an ominous whistle filled the air and a barrage of small, gleaming-black objects emerged from the foliage, when the Naruto holding her down put his lips to her ear and, letting out a small breath that made her shiver, whispered, "Number Three: Sideways Steel Rain", when the shuriken spun through the air like so many dancers of death, arcing at one point and then another, when Kakashi raised his eye from his book, snapped it shut, and clutched it to his chest as he dropped to a knee and ducked, when the black blades twirled just over his head, and when long, silver hairs fluttered gracefully into the air, getting caught by the afternoon breeze and dancing away into the sky.

The shuriken, having missed their target, sped off into the other side of the clearing and into the trees. That was when the _twangs_ of what sounded like wire began singing from the darkness, followed by further ominous creaking noises, shifting objects, and heavy thuds hitting the earth.

It was when a low, breathless chuckle hit her ear, making her shudder at the intimacy, that she realized that everything that Naruto had bragged about earlier, all his traps and logs and shuriken-launchers and faux kawarimi replacements, his hungry cats and his bowling-ball pins and his logs, his jacket and the explosive tags and the crossbow, the clutch of senbon, the silly putty, the logs, 'Rape Your Fantasies', 'Double Arts', Pointy Things', 'See That Guy? Fuck Him and Anyone Near Him', 'What Everyone Wants to do to that Dog in Duck Hunt', 'Numbah Nigel Uno', the adorable little Ranran that the clone had let her pet…_everything_, had been prepared for what was happening _right now._

Another chuckle – "Let's see him dodge _this" _– and the clearing exploded into action.

* * *

"Go, go, go, go, _go!"_

He leapt through a space in between branches, jamming his hands into the habitual seal and growling "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!". Just as he cleared the space, a dozen perfect copies of himself blossomed into being, keeping his momentum and staying with him for another jump before spreading out and jumping off into different directions.

He hit the next tree and hooked an arm on the branch above the one he had just landed on, swinging him up and launching him through the canopy of leaves above. He burst through the top and, for a few seconds, Naruto was airborne over the village forest. A few seconds was far more than he needed.

Naruto grinned at the sight – it was pretty, he decided, while still being cool enough to not be all girly-beautiful – before slapping his fingers in place once again and roaring from the very depths of his chest, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"

No less than fifty mirror-images appeared within columns of smoke, spinning slightly as they floated above the forest. Gravity quickly took hold and began pulling them all back down towards the ground. "Scatter!" Naruto yelled out at the crowd just before they disappeared into the trees. "Get to your positions!"

Naruto nodded to himself, pleased with how it was all going so far. It had started a little rough, sadly; Irons had told him the previous night that he was supposed to slip on that pair of shades and say something about 'kids next door', 'adults', and 'butt-kicking' – really, 'butt-kicking'? What was he, _seven?_ He delivered an 'ass-whooping', if anything – but he hadn't been able to get that done, what with Kakashi showing up and forcing him to improvise. Asshole.

But! He had managed to start TGH without too much of a hitch, and it had been working out smoothly so far. It would really suck, though, if one of the multi-tier traps had been disrupted; it'd render all the effort put into his 'domino effect' completely useless, if the whole thing didn't go down just so! All he could do now was hope his clones did their parts correctly and cross his fingers to ward against a bit of bad luck screwing up some minor detail in one of his traps and derailing the entire thing.

It had better damn work. He didn't think he could bear telling Irons that their ultimate work had failed.

* * *

Kakashi, for his part, was getting a little irked. Not annoyed – he refused to show enough emotion for it to be called annoyed. Irked, though, was well within the acceptable range.

It hadn't been the first wide-spread salvo of shuriken.

It hadn't been the second, third, fourth, or fifth concentrated salvos of kunai – each focusing on one smaller part of the clearing, and all of them being set off within milliseconds of each other.

It hadn't been the paintballs, and it hadn't been the (what looked to be) processed meat getting flung _everywhere_ – he had a sizeable glop stubbornly attached to his right calf and sandal.

It hadn't been the fact that he had had to put away his Icha Icha in order to keep avoiding all the shit that was being thrown at him. Even though that had pained him more than any physical wound could have.

It hadn't even been the hungry, near-insane looking, very wet kitten that had been catapulted out of the forest like a rocket, its claws bared and its mouth open, affixing itself just shy of his kneecap and managing to both eat the catfood (assuming that's what it had been, and not prison meatloaf) to sate its hunger and tear up most of his pants in that area to sate its psychotic rage at being soaked and flung through the air. It had taken a good three or four minutes to remove it (what with the whole dodging of more waves of kunai, the occasional very-well-placed senbon, a log, and a gratuitous amount of what looked like more paintballs – though, at this point, he wouldn't have been surprised if they had contained lye or some sort of itching powder instead), and he had almost gotten a finger gnawed off for his troubles. Damn cats.

No, it had been when he found himself upside-down, a standard length of rope secured around his foot and the other looped around the branch of a tree.

The reason why this irked him so? Because it wasn't even one of Naruto's traps – it was his own. Every do-or-die Bell Test of his, he had one trap to really weed out the idiot of the group: a simple noose, with an object of great value (say, a _Bell_) in the center, and the slack going up around a branch and behind the tree, where he hid and pulled hard if someone dared set foot inside that noose. And someone generally always did. There'd only been one exam where a genin hadn't fallen for such an obvious ploy – unfortunately, none of them cared at all about each other, so they didn't quite make it.

It really didn't help matters when he Kawarimi-ed his ass out of there, switching with a loose, but heavy, section of treebranch above him, since, as soon as he poofed up into the tree, he was met with a faceful of the same brownish mush that had covered his leg. The mush was quickly and eagerly followed by another very hungry, very wet cat.

"Fuck my life," Kakashi grunted as he jumped out of the tree and successfully avoided another kittykat from hell. As soon as his feet hit the ground, it caved underneath him, and he found himself knee-deep in some vile-smelling concoction of evil. Naturally, when he hit said liquid, though, it splashed, resulting in him not only being knee-deep in the stuff, but having it sprinkled lightly over his entire body. Probably in his hair, too.

He gave his head a quick shake, and heard the distinct pitter-patter of small drops of liquid hitting the grass around him. Yeah, definitely in his hair. Great. Fantastic.

"Fuck my life," he repeated calmly.

However, 'fuck his life's' notwithstanding, there was still a test going on, and he couldn't just go home, curl up into a ball, and sob hysterically like he wanted to. He had a job to do! Kind of. He needed to climb out of this hole, get his two feet under him, and good _god_, that shit smelled like rotten eggs and fish oil! Oh, and urine too, for flavor.

He should just make a t-shirt with FML printed on it in big, bold letters. At the rate he was going, it would save a lot of the hard work that went into saying it each time.

It was at that point that senbon began raining from the sky.

And then the tree behind him exploded.

Son of a _bitch_.

* * *

Naruto heard the explosion and grinned maniacally. Explosions, fire, sparks, electricity…whatever it happened to be at the time, if it was hot and sparky and could cause him a great amount of bodily harm, he loved it. That's how it had always been for him, and that was how he hoped it would always be. After all, life without explosions wasn't a life worth living.

The clones had gotten Sakura and Sasuke away from the battleground well enough, based on the memories that Sakura's clone gave him after she poofed the poor guy – she really needed to reign in that temper, especially if she was going to be on a _permanent_ _team_ with him. Permanent, as in 'going to be spending a _whole_ lot of time with'. If he was going to be around her five, twelve, or – on long-term missions – even twenty-four hours a day, he did not really want to spend the majority of it getting pummeled.

If she weren't Sakura-chan, he'd…

His line of thought almost brought him to a screeching halt, which would have had some really bad consequences, given that he was in mid-leap at the moment. He landed in the wiry clutches of a nearby tree and frowned, furrowing his brow as he thought.

What _would_ he do if Sakura-chan wasn't Sakura-chan?

Well…

But…

Sakura-chan _was_ Sakura-chan – that was all that had mattered before…that's why she could do those things that would have been unforgiveable from someone else…but, then…he hadn't ever thought about what he would do if it wasn't his crush that had been beating him up. He'd always been able to forgive her, accept it and move on. So, why now? Why _now_ was he thinking like that? What had changed?

Was it because he was on a team with her?

Was it because of what Hawkeye had said?

"Dammit," he growled, shaking his head roughly. He didn't have time for this right now – life-changing breakthroughs were _not_ supposed to take place while the eerie likeness of Armageddon was going down around his ears! They were supposed to happen when he was in a comfortable environment, like home, where he could properly put the correct amount of thought into things, and write shit down as he thought it out, and talk aloud and ask the Pranksters to-

Queue screeching halt once again.

The Pranksters! Where the hell were they?

His hands flew to his torso, looking for the jacket-pocket that he usually kept them in, only to remember that he didn't have such an article of clothing anymore. It had been used in trap number 15 last night. Could he have left it in there? Oh, shit, that would mean it was gonna get destroyed!

No, wait!

He stopped himself just before panic truly started to set in.

He'd had the Shinobi's Scroll earlier, this morning. He'd had it when Sakura-chan woke him up, and left it when he had to run from Iruka-sensei…but then he'd gotten it back from Sasuke after he whined – heh heh, who woulda thought the Bastard could actually pull of such a pathetic whine? – about how they had called him a bitch and otherwise insulted him. So, he got it back, and then he _know_ he had it while everyone was laughing at him…and then Kakashi had told them to get lost, and he had jumped into the forest to get started on his tune-ups…without the Scroll.

Oh.

Shit.

He'd left the Scroll in the clearing. And there were only two things that could possibly happen to it between when he left it and now.

Option A – it had been torn apart. That would cause him more horrible feelings than he could even count – although, he _could_ only count to one-hundred, as far as he knew (honestly, how often did you have to count past one-hundred anyway?), so that wasn't really all that special of a statement. But either way, he didn't really want to start thinking how he would feel if such an event happened. Because it goddamn _didn't!_

He moved on to listing off Option B in his mind before he started getting angry and regretful about something that hadn't even happened.

Option B – Kakashi found it while he was wandering around the clearing, before the Kage Bunshin wandered in. Kakashi picked it up. Kakashi has it. Kakashi has the Shinobi's Scroll, Kakashi has the Pranksters, Kakashi has his friends.

Naruto's lips pulled down, revealing a very ugly frown.

Kakashi was _so_ going down.

* * *

"So, how d'you think the other teams did on _their _tests?"

"Your voice is far too loud for the occasion, Kiba."

"Well _fuck you_ too, Shino."

"K-Kiba-kun-"

"Asshole," the Inuzuka added, just for good measure.

"Please calm yourself."

"Calm? I'm totally calm. Cool as a cucumber. Right, Hinata?"

"O-of course you are, Kiba-kun," the shy Hyuuga stammered in response. "But, I…I think that Shino i-is right when he said-when he said that you needed to s-speak a little softer."

Kiba grunted and sighed. "Fine," he reluctantly gave in. He cocked an eyebrow and looked over at the Aburame of the team. "So," he tried again in a lower tone of voice, "how do you guys think the others did?"

"That is completely dependent on whether or not their jounin-sensei decided to initiate such a test upon their genin." Kiba stared at his teammate in obvious confusion. Shino sighed and elaborated. "It is not mandatory for jounin-sensei to bestow upon their students an additional assessment, such as ours did."

Kiba squinted and pursed his cracked lips as gears turned slowly in his head. "Uh...you mean that other teams don't have to do a test?"

"Not if their jounin-sensei does not wish for them to, no," Shino replied, slight inclination of his head mostly unseen.

"Oh."

"D-do you know who else h-had to take an extra test, Sh-Shino-kun?"

"Naturally," Shino answered, giving another miniscule nod. "Team Seven, I know, had to perform an examination under their sensei; Hatake Kakashi is well-known for using the utilizing the self-titled 'Bell Test' upon the genin assigned to him. None have passed thus far in his career as a jounin-sensei, despite a number of truly exemplary shinobi being put under his command."

Hinata gasped. "Then, Naruto-kun-"

Kiba let off a bark of laughter, cutting her off. "Dunce is gonna fail!"

"Kiba." Shino's cold, serious voice silenced his outburst quickly. "It is not necessary, nor is it respectful, to find humor in another person's downfalls. It is even more so when that person is a classmate and comrade of yours." There was a long pause. "And Naruto will not fail."

"Oh, great, yeah – 'Naruto will not fail'," Kiba repeated. "Why the hell not? There was a _reason_ he was in last place in our entire class, you know."

"That reasoning was faulted due to insufficient information."

"Now what the f-"

"_Kiba-kun_," Hinata's voice cut across his, and he could only stare, open-mouthed, at the littlest member of Team 8. She had never cut him off before – hell, she had never cut _anyone_ off before. She was too meek and shy for that – right?

Hinata stared hard at her male teammate – so like Naruto-kun, but so very different as well, different in all the ways that were so very important to her – and said, with more conviction and finality than Shino had given when he had uttered it, "Naruto-kun _will not_ fail." And with that, she turned to the Aburame and asked, voice normal, whether there were any other teams that had to complete a post-genin evaluation.

"Ah, yes." Shino composed himself and continued. "Team Ten, under Sarutobi Asuma, were instructed to complete seven laps around Konoha yesterday. Yamanaka Ino was the only one out of them to finish, but their jounin-sensei saw fit to pass them all and accept them as his team regardless.

"Team Sixteen under Ryuji Suimin did not undergo any official examination – as I understand it, Ryuji-san was hung over when he retrieved his team from the Academy and barely paid them any attention, aside from giving his greeting before leaving. His team, consisting of Muriki Ryoko, Yoro Yumi, and Sakiten Takato, completed their first mission earlier today."

Kiba blinked. "Well…that was fast."

"Indeed."

"So, basically, everyone's an official team so far, except for Naruto and…Sasuke, and Sakura, right?"

"Correct."

Kiba chuckled to himself. "Well, now I _have_ to agree with you – Naruto's too damn stubborn to have his team to be the only one to fail, and Sasuke's pride ain't about to let _him_ fail." He shook his head and let out another chuckle. "I almost pity their sensei."

* * *

Kakashi was having the time of his life…the _worst_ time, anyway. He was dying inside as he watched Ruki – one of the busty twins from Icha Icha World (direct sequel to Icha Icha Paradise) – burning up in front of his eyes. The only thing he could think of was how cruel and terribly, deceptively_ evil_ a person Naruto actually was, to be burning _the most expensive_ blow-up doll out of the entire series of women. Ruki was by far the most popular, even more popular than Yoko, or the princess Kirema, or that smoking-hot maid that unfortunately remained nameless for her entire role in Icha Icha Paradise _and_ for her cameo appearance in the famous chapter 18 in Icha Icha Journey!

He whimpered.

Now, that whimper could have been caused by one of two things. One, because he was watching what amounted to his dream babe getting burned alive and he couldn't make any sound of anguish other than that. Or two, because the fire had successfully burned off the only small articles of clothing she had on her. We may never know.

"Kakashi!"

The man in question gave another whimper in response, completely unwilling to look away from the burning (nude) blow-up doll.

"Kakashi!" came the call again. Not a moment later, a blur slammed onto the same branch that he was occupying. "Kakashi!" Naruto yelled, accusingly, pointing his finger at him angrily. The fact that the Hatake didn't even look at him seemed to take a lot of the wind out of his sails, and the blonde deflated, his hand falling back to his side. Blue eyes widened and he let out a strained chuckle when he saw what was going on. "Oh…yeah…" He rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous grin on his face, and said, "I, uh, I thought that might get you good…"

Kakashi whimpered again.

"Yeah, kind of in bad taste, now that I see the affect it's having…"

Whimper.

"Wait a minute!" Naruto yelled, anger flying to his features again. He jabbed his accusing finger back at the jounin. "I didn't come here to apologize for totally taking your ass down a few pegs! I came because you have something of mine!" His hands set themselves on his hips and he leaned forward. "You better give me back my scroll, or I'll do something even worse than _that!"_

Kakashi gasped and ripped his tortured eye away from poor, poor Ruki. "You _wouldn't_," he whispered, horrified.

"Of course I would."

Kakashi locked eyes (eye?) with the genin in front of him and could only see cold, hard resolve. "You…you _monster_."

Naruto grinned, exposing his longer-than-normal canines. "Thanks," he said. "Now…my scroll?" The sensei rose slowly to his feet and jumped to the ground. He looked around, wary. "Relax, possible-sensei," the boy told him as he landed two or three meters away. "I ordered a complete halt of all traps for a little while – though I don't think it'll last very long. It's hard trying to restrain numbers 45, 53, 66, and 67 all at once." Naruto extended a hand. "Scroll, please."

Kakashi breathed deeply and let it all out before locking eyes with his maybe-could-be-student. A hand dipped into one of the larger pockets on his flak jacket, retrieving an unmarked scroll two hand-lengths long and one hand-length around. "This scroll?" he asked, a bit of despair creeping into his deceptively-cheery voice.

"_Yes_, 'that scroll'. _Give it_," Naruto growled.

Waving it in small circles in the air, Kakashi grinned, the anguish and horror of a burning Ruki nigh-forgotten. It was _his_ turn for mental torture, dammit, and he was going to milk it for all it was worth. "I don't really think you _deserve_ it, after what you pulled over there," he said, nodding over to the tree that they had been perched upon not a minute ago. "Unless you have something to bargain with-" there was a questioning lilt at the end "-than I am afraid you'll have to take it from me by force." Kakashi cheered internally. He was so awesome.

Naruto ground his teeth as his eyes narrowed. Damned egotistical porn-loving son of a-

A predatory grin curled his lips up as a thought hit him. Quick as it had come, the grin vanished, and he slouched a little, putting both hands into his pants pockets. "You know, Kakashi, you're right."

Blink.

"I am?" Another blink. "I mean, yes. Yes, I am." He shook a scolding finger at the blonde in front of him. "And you would do well to remember that, young man."

"I was thinking what I could possibly use as a bargaining chip – aside from halting any and all traps for the remainder of the test, because that just wouldn't be fair, or to give up and accept failure, because that would be more retarded than retarded got – when I remembered something you said earlier." A thoughtful frown tugged at his lips as he said, "You had said something along the lines of 'why in Jiraiya's name would there only be two bells'. Now," Naruto stressed, beginning to pace, his hands still in his pockets, "I knew that I knew that name from somewhere, but I could not at that moment recall. But then I asked myself: what is the one thing that Kakashi would hold in more reverence then Kami herself? The answer was quite simple." His left hand whipped out of his pocket, bringing with it a small, paperback orange book. "Your porn. Now, I realize that just the threat of burning this piece of trash in my hand would do very little, as you now own a brand-new copy – without the smudges, wear and tear, that little problem of pages sticking together, and other various ailments that affected your old paperback, making it very easy to do something to it, like tearing it apart. Your new hardcover could probly take more of a beating."

Kakashi chuckle/giggled.

Naruto paused, shook his head, muttering, "You sick, disgusting human being, you," and locked eyes with Kakashi – once he stopped giggling and reopened his visible eye, that is. "But!" he said sharply, bringing the jounin's focus off of words easily taken into a perverted context and back onto him. "But…" He smirked and tilted his head from one side to the other, saying the next bit in a sing-song tune. "…I know some~thing you don't know!"

Kakashi just stared at him, bewildered.

"Oh, come now, Kakashi. You can't honestly remember?" Naruto shook his head in a disappointed manner. "I would have thought you'd remember your porn better. You see," he continued, taking his other hand out of its pocket and flipping the cover of Icha Icha Paradise open, "I flipped through this old thing sometime last night and – oi, wipe that smile off your face, ya perv, I didn't _read _any of it – and on the cover page to this trash was something very interesting."

"No…" Kakashi breathed. How had he forgotten that? How had he just _let the boy keep it _like that? Good lord, he must be slipping in his old age…

"Yes!" Naruto cried, delighted. There, on the cover page, were several hastily-written – probably when the one penning them was drunk off their ass – and very splotchy characters. "Now, I'm no expert – although, honestly, I don't know if an expert could do any better than this, 'cause I'm certainly damn proud of myself for this – but if you squint and kinda tilt your head, that splatter of ink there looks _kinda_ like a signature. And it _kinda_ looks like it says 'Jiraiya'. Now, if it's the same Jiraiya that's credited as the author of the book, I don't know, but if it was, that makes _this_ book," he gave it a small, mocking shake, "a little more valuable than yours, don't'cha think?"

Kakashi was silent. At first it was amazingly awesome, with Naruto thinking that he'd totally frozen the man into a stupor. After two minutes had passed without any change, though, the hilarity got kind of stale, and Naruto inched closer to the jounin, waving the book in the air teasingly. After another minute, Naruto was a little concerned. "Guys!" he called loudly. "I broke that dude that could have been our sensei!"

"What the _hell_, Naruto?" a very angry, feminine voice screeched from a clump of trees nearest to the pond. "How could you go and _break_ our sensei?"

"He's not our sensei yet, Sakura-chan!" he replied as the pink-haired kunoichi stumbled into the clearing. She glared at him.

"You better not be starting that, too, Naruto," she told him venomously. "I heard it enough from Kakashi-sensei, and I _do not_ need it from _you_."

"Didn't say nothing, Sakura-chan," the blonde said, holding up his hands in a warding gesture. "Oi, Bastard!"

"_What_ have I _told you_ about calling Sasuke-kun-"

"You broke him, dunce," Sasuke said, looking at the man with a slightly-raised eyebrow as he stepped out from the forest. "Good job. We can be our own team, now."

"Cool."

"Loser."

"Bastard."

"So if he's just going to stay that way," Sakura said, jumping in between their exchange in an effort to be included, "wouldn't now be the best time to grab the bells?"

Naruto was about to open his mouth to reply when a small tube impacted with his face. He flew backward, the book in his hand flying solo, and hit the ground. A gloved hand deftly caught the work of erotic fiction and quickly slipped it into a pocket. The tube smacked into his head again when he was trying to get up, sending him back to the dirt.

"Good job, Sakura-chan," came the muffled voice of Naruto. "You jinxed it."

"Hello, genin," the awakened Kakashi said cheerfully, both novels of wonderful, glorious porn safely in their correct pockets.

"Hello, jounin," Naruto muttered, sitting back on his haunches and picking up the scroll. He quickly pulled it open and, seeing what looked like a few choice swearwords from an annoyed Hawkeye, decided that yes, it was definitely the scroll that he wanted. He flipped open the lower pocket on the left leg of his orange cargo pants and tucked the Shinobi's Scroll inside, zipping the pocket shut behind it. Satisfied, he stood and turned his attention to Kakashi.

"I'm the jounin," the Hatake was saying. He lowered his stance and cocked his head. "And I think it's time we actually got this over with."

Naruto grinned at him and slugged Sasuke on the shoulder. He pointedly ignored the glare he was given back and instead smiled even wider, and said, "We're not ending this, jounin." He slid into his own, bastardized stance. Sasuke imitated him, dropping into a slight variant of the basic taijutsu stance taught in the Academy.

The Uchiha smirked and added with an air of finality, "We're just beginning."

They sprang forward.

* * *

Sakiten Takato, the sole male genin of Team 16, was a very average boy. He was aware of the attention he received from some of the elder shinobi – they assumed that, just because he was younger than everyone else, he must have graduated early and therefore be an exemplary example of true ninja-ness.

In truth, he hadn't graduated early, or skipped a grade, or anything of the sort. He was two years younger than all the other graduates simply because his mum had been all gung-ho about throwing him into training earlier than the others, mostly to prove to the rest of the family that her son actually _did_ have a spine somewhere and _could _prove himself to be something to be proud of someday. She and her family line had enough leg room in politics and were well-versed in bullying to get their way, so it wasn't a surprise to him when he was put in the Academy at four years of age instead of the standard six.

Takato didn't really like his family. They were big, and brutish, and bullies for generations backwards and forwards and from one side to the other. His mother had been the same growing up – very unpleasant to be around, she had been – and it wasn't until the Kyuubi came and wiped out a good third of their very extensive family that she began slowly changing her tune. She was a very wonderful woman nowadays, if a bit hostile towards the other graduating kids' clans.

He was currently shopping in a little-known grocery store; it lay near the Aburame grounds, which explained _exactly _why he was the only customer there. He didn't mind, though. He enjoyed the quiet.

He doubted he'd get very much of it anymore, now that he was on a team with the indomitable Yoro Yumi.

His face flushed involuntarily as his mind leapt onto his extremely quirky teammate. He shook his head quickly, stamping down thoughts that were trying to emerge, and, his face flaming red, grabbed a can of tomato juice off the shelf and put it into his bag before going to the next aisle.

Takato was a lonely child. He didn't have much in the way of extreme emotions growing up, having most of them tempered out by his rough-and-tough cousins, second cousins, and evil nephews and nieces. So it was with a divided mind that he tolerated Yumi's…eccentricities. She made him _feel_ things – embarrassment, shock, fear and joy and the faint stirrings of attraction, excitement and eagerness, rage, pity, and sadness.

It had been astounding when her obsession started with him three years ago, and it was still astounding now.

He grabbed a couple of apples, put them into the bag, and walked to the checkout.

He really didn't understand how someone could grow up to _become_ like Yumi; how she could be so out-of-touch with reality, how she would leave everything at the drop of a hat if he needed her for something, how her happy-go-lucky attitude could stand unwavering in the face of mockery and put-downs.

The only time Takato had ever lost his temper had been one year previous, when Inuzuka Kiba let slip a particularly negative remark against Yumi, and about her mother.

Yumi had told him about her mother, and especially about the bond they had before (and, yes, even now that) she died. So she had stood silently to the side while Takato strode forward and tore the dog-user a whole new _something, _ripped him apart piece by bloody-metaphorical-piece and left him speechless in such a way that most of the class didn't think was possible. Yumi had treated him to as much slightly-burnt homemade tempura and yakitori as he could possibly ingest later that night, and Kiba didn't come back to school for a week afterwards.

It could be said that Sakiten Takato cared about Yoro Yumi…

He paid for his items and walked out the door, and his hand rested on the extra hitait-ate that was hanging from his neck.

…he would not deny it too strongly.

* * *

"Watch where you're aiming that, you goddamn good-for-nothing prissy stuck-up Uchiha!"

"If you spent more time trying to get those Bells than thinking up insults for me, we'd already be done!" Sasuke retorted as his katon jutsu subsided.

"Oh, puh-_lease!_ I don't need to _think_ to insult you! I have a whole _library_ of 'em to choose from – and it helps that it comes as naturally as breathing to me!" Naruto flipped backwards, slicing off a portion of his right pants leg that was beginning to smolder as he arced in midair. When he landed he had to hastily jerk to the side to avoid a jab to the sternum and, as a result, almost plowed headfirst into a nimbly-dodging Sasuke. "Watch where you're going!"

"Learn how to fight!" Sasuke shot back.

"Holy – Kakashi! That was on _so many _levels of wrong!" Naruto screamed, sufficiently vexed when the jounin decided to slash at his privates with a kunai.

"If I was able to get that close to you, Naruto-kun," Kakashi crooned sweetly, "than I would say that _you _are the one on a level of 'wrong'." A brace of shuriken flew from his hands, causing Sasuke to duck low, roll, and spring into the air from his hands in order to avoid them. In midair, the Uchiha spun forward once, snapping his leg out as he turned and attempting to catch the jounin with a blow to the top of his head. Kakashi simply leveled a finger with him and flicked his sandal. Sasuke spun like a top before slamming back into the ground. "After all, trash-talking in fights is best left to the professionals." He laughed a little and shook his head in exaggerated amusement – and, coincidentally, avoided every single kunai that Naruto chucked at his smiling face. "See, now, if you were wearing a skin-tight crimson body-suit, wielded a few swords, and had some really witty comebacks, then _maybe_ you could get away with that sort of thing."

"Oh, shut _u-UUOOAH!"_ Naruto yelled as Kakashi blocked a sloppy punch before grabbing onto the bare arm and swinging its owner into the air. Naruto slammed into his teammate, who had been about to execute a perfect axe-kick to the back of the jounin's head, and they both hit the dirt.

"_Remind me_," Sasuke snarled, shoving the blonde off of him, "why _exactly_ we're working together? Because, to me, it seems that all you've managed to do is _get in my way_."

"He. Is. A. _Jounin._" Naruto growled slowly, forcibly snapping down after each word. "You couldn't take on a _chuunin_ by yourself, Bastard, no matter how strong or how talented you may think the Rookie of the Year really is. You. Are. A. _Genin._ He is leagues above _you_, he is leagues above _me_, he is leagues above the both of us combined even _if_ we were fighting in perfect…uh…"

"Unison."

"In perfect unison with each other," Naruto finished immediately, as if he hadn't even heard Sasuke's suggestion and had, in fact, known that that was the word to use all along. He pointedly ignored the glare he was given. "There is no possible way for us to beat him." He lolled his head to the side and shot a long look at the idling jounin. "But remember…"

"We don't have to beat him," Sasuke concluded with a stiff nod. "Just get the Bells."

"'xactly."

"Then let's go again."

"Then stop talking so much and go already."

Growling, the Uchiha bolted forward, keeping his body low to the ground as he looped around Kakashi, aiming for the blind spot caused by the hitai-ate over the man's left eye. At the same time, Naruto took a running jump, on a perfect arc towards the silver-haired man; kunai and shuriken appeared in his hands as he yelled out, "Sakura-chan! Fourty-one!" Almost immediately, several high-velocity kunai spat into the clearing from the treeline, aimed carefully at the Hatake. As per routine, Kakashi disappeared just before they hit; breaking the routine, however, was the fact that Kakashi had grabbed hold of Sasuke before he used Kawarimi and Kunai Storm slammed into a poor, unsuspecting log.

Naruto grinned as his leap took him cleanly over the kunai and the log, and he hit the ground in a roll. When he popped out of the roll, he glanced back at the log and recognized the pattern he had cut onto it – that was trap 76, and # 9 in the Kawarimi Log series. That was the one that had been positioned – his eyes swept across several of the overcropping trees before fixing onto one that reached the most into the clearing – _there_, by the pond. The shuriken had left his hand before a smile even began to spread his lips wide and reveal his animalistic incisors.

The black stars sliced through the air and reached the tree just as something fell out it. Closer examination revealed it to be a crooked treebranch, and as soon as the shuriken thudded into it, another object fell out of the branches overhead. It was dark, it was pale, and it was covered in dozens of small, multicolor dots.

"Oh, come _on!" _Naruto yelled as his feet began pumping underneath him. "Kakashi! Using Sasuke as a shield is _so_ not cool! Funny as hell, sure – but _not_ cool!"

A third something fell from the tree, and landed in a crouch. It was tall, gangly, and had three-fourths of its face covered. And it had blue and green paint in its hair. And on its left sandal. And its right hand and arm. And on the metal plating of its headband.

Naruto had long since stopped running. He let out a long whistle, though, and said, "Now, _that_…_that_ was cool."

Kakashi's hands moved faster than Naruto's eyes could track them, and he let his legs completely crumple underneath him, dropping him bonelessly to the ground, in an effort to dodge the sudden barrage of kunai. One still managed to open a thin gash up his forehead and through his hair, sending droplets of blood and a handful of hairs flying into the air. He rolled to one side to avoid another line of kunai, which struck the earth where he had been laying not a moment ago and pushed down all the way up to the rings.

"Kakashi!" Naruto yelled, throwing the other handful of kunai and shuriken that he was holding straight up into the air.

"Naruto," the man replied, his voice clearly annoyed as he gave a small leap into the air before driving his knee down towards the boy's face. The blonde rolled again, pushing off the leg that implanted itself in his place and tumbling to his feet. "You are a very bothersome genin."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Naruto said, waving away the seriousness with a quick flutter of his hand. "I'm evil, and you hate me forever and ever, and we really should get around to going to therapy for this problem of ours, but – whoa!" He jerked back and bent his waist to the right, avoiding a quick jab from the jounin. "Dammit, Kakashi, what I'm trying to say is – oi!" He leapt backwards, scrunching his stomach away from the metal-plated fist that had taken a swing at it, and received a sweeping uppercut to the jaw for his efforts. His head bounced once when he hit the ground, and he moaned in pain as he spat out a wad of blood. He began talking again, his voice garbled a little, before he was interrupted. "Kakashi, I – oh, there it is."

A kunai with an explosive note made a slight ringing noise as it dug into the dirt in front of his face, right next to Kakashi's sandaled feet. Naruto grinned, looking up at the man and giving a half-shrug, and said, "Insert witty comeback here," before the note detonated and a ball of writhing flame and smoke consumed them both.

* * *

Hi again. I think my update's a few days early, this time, actually. I am so good. Things were a little quick, and a little choppy, I think, near the end, but it came out okay. It always manages to, somehow.

Once again (again), sorry for no appearance by the Pranksters. Their thoughts on the going-ons of the past chapter or two start off Chapter Nine, though, so I hope that'll sate your appatite.

That's about all I can say, really. The Bell Test'll come to a close in the next chapter, and I've no idea where I'll go from there. Perhaps a few chapters of mundane D-rank missions, just to piss some people off. *laughs*


	9. Chapter 9

The Marauders _ a Naruto fanfiction by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

Chapter Nine

* * *

_Hawkeye really wishes that they had been picked up by a more intelligent reader. This was the __**second**__ time in just as many hours that the reader went and forgot them, leaving them completely helpless and vulnerable._

_Irons thinks that Hawkeye-teme needs to pry at least __**some**__ of that stick out of his ass. So the owner forgot them – he's not even thirteen yet, and he has the attention span of a magpie. Such an event should be easily understandable._

_Hawkeye understands the event well enough, thank you very much, but that doesn't mean he has to like it, nor does that mean he has to take it easy on the reader for being a brain-damaged six-year-old with ADD. On a sugar-high._

_Sparky __**does**__ wish that the owner paid a little more attention to his surroundings. Getting forgotten is rather tiresome._

_Hawkeye points out that 'tiresome' doesn't even begin to cover it._

_Spitfire doesn't really care whether or not they get left behind – the kid'll always remember them again, and he'll always come back and pick them up again._

_Hawkeye is in awe at how amazingly, pathetically sappy and clichéd that was._

…

_Hawkeye can't help but groan. The__** Hatake**__ has them, now. Fantastic. Of all the people to pick them up, it had to be him. Hell, Hawkeye would have preferred the nosy little bitch of a Uchiha over the Hatake._

_Sparky insists that there is absolutely nothing wrong with Kakashi-kun, and Hawkeye-san really should try to be more accepting of others._

_Irons adds that when Hawkeye-teme is 'more accepting of others', Irons would find a way to commit suicide before he had to experience the pain that comes with the world being rent apart because someone did what they shouldn't have done, what was impossible – like dividing by zero._

_Hawkeye is now seriously thinking of being more accepting of others…_

_Sparky chides Hawkeye-san and tells him to be nice, and Irons-san shouldn't be so violent and/or sarcastic – it doesn't befit him._

_Hawkeye says that Sparky no Baka can stick his chiding where the sun doesn't shine, as Hawkeye is not about to, nor will he ever, listen to any advice that is bestowed upon him by such an unintelligent character._

_Irons defends Sparky-kun, and says that he is one of the smartest people that he has ever known._

_Spitfire has to butt in and say that that's kind of sad – Sparky has his moments of genius, sure, but she wouldn't exactly go so far as to call him __**smart**__._

_Sparky gets hit in the heart with an arrow and cries out in betrayal. And pain._

_Spitfire shakes her head at Sparky's antics, calls him a fool, and tells him to stop writhing on the ground like that, because it's just so damn pathetic._

_Hawkeye fully agrees with everything Spitfire has said within the past few paragraphs, and points out in a combination of annoyance and cruel irony that the Hatake is now opening their scroll. Today had started out so well, too._

…

_Sparky wants to know why Spitfire and Hawkeye-san purposefully blocked him!_

_Spitfire says that Sparky would've done something stupid had she not._

_Hawkeye says that Sparky no Baka has problems with reigning in both his emotions and his mouth – things that shouldn't be said would have been said had he been allowed to speak with the Hatake._

_Irons thinks that it was awfully mean of them._

_Hawkeye was simply ensuring that they remain tied to whom they remain tied to, without mucking their purpose, pasts, and futures up because of poorly-thought and ill-chosen words._

_Sparky just wanted to talk…_

_Spitfire tells Sparky that that was the problem – and as unfair as it may be, she and Hawkeye couldn't just stand by and watch Sparky blurt out their existence._

_Hawkeye forbids Sparky no Baka from appearing again if the Hatake ever graces them with his presence in the future._

_Irons doubts that someone like Hawkeye-teme'd be able to stop Sparky-kun so easily. Irons admits that even he had trouble keeping hold onto Sparky-kun when he wanted to get out of his wires, the slippery little bugger._

_Hawkeye grins nastily and informs an ignorant Irons that he had the unique ability to beat Sparky no Baka's ass every time they met up - when they were snot-nosed little punks who tussled around in the Academy, when they were newly-appointed genin who squabbled between missions, when they were over-confident chuunin, and when they were successful jounin tag-teaming on the battlefield._

_Irons didn't know that…_

_Hawkeye says that that's why he called Irons ignorant. And Spitfire would have joined them, he adds, had she not been pining for a genin team at the time – the poor disillusioned lass._

_Spitfire gives Hawkeye the finger, calmly tells him to fuck off, and informs him that there is absolutely nothing wrong with wishing to become a jounin-sensei. It would have been like helping out the kid, here, only with two extra brats to deal with._

_Sparky assures Spitfire that those other genin would have been nowhere near as entertaining, or as interesting, as the owner is or has the potential to be._

_Hawkeye wants to know why exactly Sparky no Baka felt he needed to include himself in the discussion, as well as why he deemed it necessary to attempt to boost the ego of the child when he isn't even present at the time. Sparky no Baka really is just a sad, stupid little man, isn't he?_

_Spitfire repeats herself, telling Hawkeye to fuck off, and deems this line of conversation firmly over._

_Irons wants-_

_Spitfire said it was __**over!**_

* * *

Something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh emerged from his throat as he coughed, slowly rolling onto his back while paying particular attention to his chest – it hurt like a _bitch_, to be honest, and he was pretty sure one or two bones were broken and/or otherwise screwed-up.

Naruto grinned painfully and levered himself up onto his arms. He shuffled his body back half a meter and rested against the tree that sat there, chuckling again as he looked at the slowly-clearing cloud of black smoke that marked where he had been just moments ago. He had switched with a clone as the explosive note detonated – it had just managed to catch his stomach with the initial shockwave and hurl him back a meter before he managed to locate a nearby bunshin's signature and swap with it. The clone had taken the last of the blast, as well as the fire that bloomed directly after, and had popped easily once the flame reached it.

Predictably, there was no dead body or incapacitated maybe-could-be-sensei to be seen once the smoke wafted away in the light breeze. Sakura-chan was nervously stepping towards the explosion point, her head swiveling left and right as she looked for traces of Kakashi. Finding none, she immediately snapped back over to Sasuke, who was meandering over by the pond, picking up the stray kunai, senbon, and shuriken that littered the ground. He kept pausing every couple of steps to glance around suspiciously for an extra-crispy Kakashi to make his appearance. Such a thing failed to show, despite the twenty-something times he looked for one in the last few seconds.

"Oi!" There was a rustling from the foliage to his left and what seemed to be a Kage Bunshin bolted out, backpedaling when it passed in front of the original's bare feet.

"Oh, there you are," Naruto commented easily, tilting his head slightly. He lifted an eyebrow – how many are left, and do you know where Kakashi went to? – and the clone frowned – not very many, and not at the moment – as it skid to a halt. Naruto gave a half-hearted curse and sighed. It was all fun and games until your prey didn't do like good, obedient little prey should; then it became annoying, and frustrating, and…and so very _troublesome_, dammit.

Kakashi was _supposed_ to have stumbled into the clearing and gotten a faceful of Numbah Nigel Uno, the bowling ball. Once it connected, it would have split into two, ricocheting off the jounin's head and flying into the treeline. One of the pieces was supposed to activate traps three (Sideways Steel Rain), six (Curveball, Spitball, Goofball), eighteen (Cloudy with a Chance of Kunai), and twenty-two (Akamichi versus Everyone Else); twenty two was composed of a collection of bowling pins, with connecting each pin with a new trap. Twenty-two would have activated traps twenty-four, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-seven, forty-five, forty-eight, fifty-three, sixty-four, sixty-six, and sixty-eight (the summation of which included a small notebook that had all its pages replaced with armed explosive tags with 'Death' written on its black leather-bound cover, another which catapulted several large fish into the clearing from the pond, and another that flung garbage-liquid-filled water balloons all around while shedding confetti and glitter from their colorful, rubbery hides). The second half of Numbah Uno was supposed to go into another section of trees, detonating nearly every shuriken/kunai-based trap that Naruto had put up, including number fifty-seven (Catch Me If You Can) – one of the specialties he had pointed out to Sakura-chan before it had all started. Those ones threw shit into the clearing, which activated other shit if (when) they missed, which activated more, and so on and so forth, wet and angry kitties flying through the air, hidden underground Kage Bunshin bursting up through the grass and shouting about piercing the heavens (Irons told him that this posing was almost as important as what he had been told to do for trap Numbah Uno, which he had failed to do due to a certain silver-haired jerk), a few secondary-character-esque trees toppling over, one or two specifically-timed towers of fire belching up from the ground (at such a time when they did so, Irons had instructed Naruto to say something about not believing in rodents of unusual size, despite Naruto quite firmly believing in such a thing – after all, even discounting summons, there were still the giant animals lurking in Training Area 44), Kage Bunshin attempting to distract/capture/subdue the jounin with wires and the power of very lengthy sticks, and on and on.

Naruto couldn't help but think that Irons helped himself to _way_ too many television shows and comic books when he was a child. Assuming he wasn't still a child, anyhow. Because there was no possible way he could think of the things he brought up every once in a while: they ranged from asking him to say something in a weird voice ("What possible reason would I have to say 'Asta la vista, baby'? What the hell does that even _mean?"_) to vague, out-of-place references to something that he couldn't even begin to place (_Irons can't help but think how much easier the new owner's life would have been if his eyes turned green instead of red when he was angry…too bad he can't just go pick up gamma radiation from the grocer…_). There was no real pattern for them, either; it was as spontaneous and shifting as Kakashi's moods.

Speaking of…where had that jounin gotten to?

He inclined his head, sighing, before jerking it slightly to the right – dammit. Go look for him and report back later – and it sped off back into the trees. When it had vanished from sight, he yelled out in a cracking voice – getting hurt _hurt_, dammit! – "Why doesn't anybody care about the teammate that's actually injured?"

Sasuke didn't even look up from his scavenging; apparently he had decided that Kakashi wasn't about to burst out of the treeline and remove his head from his body, and had ceased the paranoia stage of looking around suspiciously every step. "If we spent any amount of time worrying over every little boo-boo you got, we wouldn't have time enough to think, let alone do anything productive."

Naruto snickered at the fact that the Bastard used the word 'boo-boo' before he realized what had actually been said. He stopped snickering. He made a frowny-face.

"You're not _that_ injured, Naruto!" Sakura shouted from her place at her beloved's side. "Stop being an idi-"

Her last insult could not be heard when a fireball consumed one of the trees by the pond, the explosion easily drowning her voice in the resulting noise. Naruto's eyes lit up, and his hands were in his signature seal before the fire was spirited away, a dozen Kage Bunshin forming around him. The delighted grin on his face dimmed when he realized the implications of his injuries – because Kage Bunshin were copies of himself, _exact_ copies of himself, they appeared as he was, how he was. So instead of twelve able-bodied, bright-eyed little blonde delinquents in 'kill me' orange, he had twelve weary, annoyed, beat-up and bruised copies that were painfully low on kunai, shuriken, clothing, and ramen.

Damn the perfection of that technique! Damn it straight to the deepest, darkest corner of the Abyss!

He grunted and hoisted himself to his feet, two of his clones steadying him as he took a deep breath. His torso was black and blue – bruising from the blast – and ached something annoying, but it was not ultimately the worst pain he'd ever been in; he could deal. He grunted again as he moved, but shoved the pain to the back of his mind and walked into the clearing, the last vestiges of his shirt attempting to cling to his torso as he did so.

So, yes, we now have the classical muscle-toned fool about to have a final showdown with his foe, having lost/destroyed half-to-all of his shirt in the process of their previous (dozen) fights, and looking remarkably beat all to hell; naturally, as the main protagonist always has a demon/badass hero for a father or simply has enormous hidden potential (a lot of the times it's both), the fact that he has burns over twenty percent of his body, has a cut so deep in his shoulder that his arm should have fallen off by now, a gaping hole in his side due to a well-placed energy beam, missing half his jaw, got a sword shoved through his neck, and had the honor of getting eviscerated, will not even slow him down. Who wants to go watch Dragonball Z, now?

Sasuke was advancing on the detonation site, his pouches stocked to the brim with the various weapons he had picked up and a number of kunai clenched tightly in his fists. Sakura was right behind him, choosing instead to wield the senbon – and that's really only because Sasuke had refused to give her the kunai and shuriken; he preferred _real_ weapons over stupid little needles. He would come to see how lethal those 'stupid little needles' could be before long.

The blonde quickly fell into place, estimating how long it would take for them to reach the tree and matching their pace. The other clones he sent through the lush greenery, towards the explosion, hoping that they still might be able to gain an advantage over the pesky jounin. It was a pretty foolish hope – even he had to admit that – given the giant difference in skill levels, but it never hurt to have an unattainable goal, right? He'd had several in his life, and the only thing that came from that was his trying the hardest he possibly could and (usually) achieving something; hardly a negative result.

But, moving matters on to a more deserving target…

"I have to admit," a voice from behind them started pleasantly, before letting out a stream of coughs. When they settled, it continued with, "that I didn't even spot the majority of your traps, Hellish Offspring." Naruto just shook his head, not bothering to freeze up or get scared out of his wits. Honestly, did the man _have_ to come up with a new nickname every time they saw each other? Well, at least they were amusing. "I counted about thirty when I walked around before, but given personal experience, I'm willing to up it to somewhere past fifty. I don't suppose you'd be willing to enlighten the ignorant?"

"What, and tell you how many there actually were?" Naruto asked, wincing slightly as the talking caused twinges of pain through his chest.

"Yes," Kakashi said with an almost-eager but still amazingly bored tone of voice.

"Well..." Naruto turned around to look his foe in the eye, and couldn't help the short laugh that slipped from his lips when he saw the condition of said foe.

Kakashi looked like shit.

"Hey, Kakashi," Naruto said. "You look like shit."

Kakashi blinked and looked down at himself. It was a long way to the ground, he decided; curse his mom for being two-and-half meters tall! It was her fault that he was so tall and gangly and awkward. Then he realized that Naruto was in no way referring to his height when he told him that he looked like shit – really, it should have been obvious, he told himself chidingly – but rather the state of his being. And he had to admit, his state of being did look like…well, not _shit, _but it certainly wasn't all that great. About half of his body had since been covered in a rainbow assortment of paint; and not just a single kind of paint, but the paint was as broad as the colors used. There was watercolor paint, there was house paint, there was that fancy kind of paint that some of the really finicky artists used, there was what seemed to be tar (which, granted, wasn't paint, but Naruto had given it color with food coloring or something, so it was kind of similar), and there was small splotches of very colorful foods (also not paint, but still a very vibrant substance; and it was edible, which was a definite plus over the regular paint), too. There was black, red, green, yellow, orange, ORANGE, pink, magenta, russet brown, earth brown, fecal-matter brown, haze-grey, deck-grey, machinery-grey, grey-grey, violet, royal purple, sunset yellow, blood red, forest green, moss green, puke green…the list could go on for another half-page, at least. And it was _everywhere_: smeared on his hitai-ate, on his mask, sticking his hair together in long, stubborn streaks, completely covering his upper left arm, on his fingers and gloves and dotting the metal plates sewn on; he had long red streaks on his left leg – though whether that was paint or blood from that hell-cat from before was up for debate – and his right kneecap looked as if had been graciously dunked in the puke green color. It was not an appetizing look.

Foregoing the paint, even, he still couldn't claim to be the picture of shinobi readiness. His left pants leg was nearly nonexistent – due to that aforementioned hell-cat – save for the bit of scrap cloth near his ankle and the last bit that barely covered his black boxers with white stripes. His hair was greenish (where it didn't have paint in it, at least) and sticky, and smelled particularly awful. He knew that better than anyone, save for perhaps Naruto, given his special contract with the canine summons. It was horrid, like fish eggs and urine and fish oil and a multitude of other disgusting scents.

His flak jacket had several deep scratches in it, from several different hell-cats. They hadn't managed to pierce the top-left pocket, though, which was all that mattered in the end. That was where he kept his Icha Icha. The plates on his gloves were dented and scratched – granted, they'd pretty much always been like that, but they sure had a lot more now – from all the various pointy/heavy things he had blocked and batted away.

Yes, all in all, not the best he's ever looked.

"I suppose I do," Kakashi agreed amiably. He looked up and noticed that Sasuke and Sakura still had not turned around, frozen in fear as they were. Was he really releasing that much killing intent? He looked around and saw what seemed to be a squirrel having a seizure. Oh, maybe he was. Oops. And how strange – he didn't _feel_ angry. In fact, he felt that the whole thing was kind of amusing, if not frustrating and annoying; but he supposed his subconscious could be feeling something profoundly different, the blasted, ungrateful, argumentative thing that it was.

He toned down his _ki,_ and the two relaxed a little and turned around. Sasuke's eyes flickered down towards his belt-line again, at the bells. At least, he _hoped_ it was the bells, because if it wasn't, then things were going to be very awkward when they passed.

He paused. Did he seriously just inner-monologue '_when_ they passed'? Damn. That meant he was starting to like these kids. Why the heck was he so confident that they'd pass, anyway?

"Hey, Sakura! Kakashi called Sasuke a pasty-faced, talentless, little mama's boy!"

Oh, yeah. That's why. Stupid, mischievous, controlling, evil, trap-setting, button-pushing, pranking, annoying, bothersome little hellion…in orange…but he _was_ fun…

He wasn't able to continue that train of thought any further, because he quickly became busy avoiding Sakura's savage, raging fists. The expression on her face didn't reassure him all that much of her sanity. He idly wondered if she reacted this way to any other stimuli; perhaps the color red, like a bull? No, wait, she wore red all the time and wasn't in a blinding fury 24/7…maybe 10/7, if what he had seen of her was close to normal occurrences.

And then Sasuke appeared behind him, leveling a sloppy roundhouse towards the base of his neck, and Kakashi felt at that point that it would be wiser to stop thinking things through so much and simply deal with the matter at hand. So he did.

* * *

_Irons can't help but be sad at the fact that Training Ground Hell isn't going like it was supposed to; that bowling ball was supposed to split in two, darnit! That's a whole slew of traps that were just skipped over!_

_Spitfire assures Irons that any traps missed will no doubt be activated manually by the kid, or one of his Kage Bunshin._

_Sparky offers his condolences to Irons, that TGH isn't going off without a hitch as hoped for._

_Hawkeye doesn't know why Irons believed that everything would go off perfectly; he would have to be deliriously and hopelessly naïve, and…nevermind._

_Irons takes offense to that!_

_Hawkeye says that Irons can go ahead and take as much offense as he wants to what is said, but it will not make what is said any less true._

_Sparky has to admit that he is rather impressed at the sheer amount and relative accuracy of the kunai/shuriken traps; he does not think he could have been that precise._

_Irons accepts Sparky-kun's compliment and thanks him for actually having something constructive to add, unlike a certain someone with a bird fetish._

_Hawkeye protests that it is most certainly __**not**__ a 'fetish', and birds are far better companions and fighters than Irons was, anyway._

_Irons calls Hawkeye-teme a self-righteous asshole._

_Hawkeye calls Irons a petulant child._

_Spitfire calls them both immature dickheads._

_Sparky heaves a rather large sigh at the others' current behavior, and wonders what exactly he did to deserve such a punishment._

_Irons points out that it was Sparky-kun's fault for being friends with them._

_Sparky can't argue with that – even if he really, really wants to._

* * *

Their movements were sloppy, Kakashi decided after several minutes of (in his opinion) light sparring. There was certainly the correct power in the blows – or were they actually stronger? – but the movements were slower, and unrefined. It wasn't anything particularly noteworthy, not really, but he did notice it. He just brushed it off as them getting tired.

Unfortunately, such as these things tend to go, that line of thinking was exactly what brought an end to the famed Bell Test.

It was hard to tell, but for the last five minutes, the two had been slowly pushing him back towards the pond; Naruto only leapt in to deal a quick punch or kick twice during the exchange, which was odd in itself. Kakashi knew that he was moving backwards, but didn't really think it a problem. Likewise, he also knew that under normal circumstances, Naruto would have been putting a whole lot more effort into the game 'Let's Beat the Bollocking Shite Out of a Jounin'; but still he ignored it. It was hard enough dealing with the kunoichi-turned-demon, let alone actually thinking things out rationally and logically. And besides, Kakashi didn't really do logic in the first place. He ate logic for breakfast, along with whatever health-hazard he could dig up that morning.

It was only when something – several somethings, actually – slammed into his back and curled their something-limbs around his body that he finally realized what was going on. And he didn't like it. One of his hands flew down to the bells on his belt to check that they were still there; they were, and it surprised him for a split second that no one had gone after them yet. Speaking of, any one of the three genin – especially Naruto – could have gotten it at any point during their little spar if they had moved fast enough. Sasuke could have gotten it, had he not been…moving…

Kakashi sighed a curse just as the surface of the pond exploded upwards, sending water, fish, and approximately fifteen shuriken wrapped in what looked like paper into the air, aimed directly at everyone's favorite cycloptic leader. The off-white group of shuriken slammed into the ground in front of him, throwing up a disproportionate amount of dirt in comparison with their apparent size and weight. He didn't really have a lot of time to think about why that was, as the moment the metal met the grass, the small lines of ink on the paper lit up red, like the glowing embers of a dying flame. He gave another quiet curse when exactly what that meant processed in his mind, and managed to predictably get out of the little bind that he was in – and leaving Sakura, Sasuke, and multiple Narutos to that fate instead – before the explosive notes went off.

Moments before the paper-encrusted shuriken exploded in a ball of fire, noise, and over-all chaos, Kakashi branched out with his chakra, seeking out points of escape – he couldn't very well throw the little bastards off of his back, arms, and legs, and _then_ get out of the way. Besides, with yet another suicidal move like this, it was fairly obvious that every one of them, even the Sasuke and Sakura, were Kage Bunshin created by the Hated One; come to think of it, that may have explained why those two were moving so differently from usual. Although he was very good at acting…Therefore, the only option was to use Kawarimi. Naruto knew this. Naruto also still had some of the necessary switch points rigged with traps, like the ones Kakashi had previously encountered a _lot_ of. So if he were a blonde in orange pants and no shirt, where would he expect a jounin like himself to Kawarimi to?

If it were any other person, rational thought would dictate that the boy would be waiting at the nearest available object of sufficient size and weight. Shinobi, however, being a bit more paranoid than normal, tended to switch with objects a little bit further along their range of ability. But since it was _Naruto_ he was dealing with, it was highly likely that the little pranking hellspawn knew that ninja-skills would bring him to switch with the farthest-away log that he could, and would have planned for that accordingly, possibly on multiple of the further points. So Kakashi switched with that closest log, feeling a little pleased with himself at outmaneuvering his maybe-could-be student as the clearing vanished from his vision and swirled into an unintelligible kaleidoscope of color.

The pleased feeling vanished the moment his voyage stopped and his feet hit the sturdy branch of yet another tree. This was mostly due to the face that he was far, far less than a fraction of a second from being dogpiled by several copies of the Hated One and had no time at all to Kawarimi his way out.

See, now, if he let himself use any ninjutsu during this thing aside from a few switcheroo-no-jutsu, he'd make sure that no one ever passed _ever_. But even he had to admit that that wouldn't be all that fair. So he stood there and took it.

The whole thing had been going on for too long, anyway.

* * *

Sasuke frowned. He was getting a little…_tired_…of doing whatever the dunce told him – told _him!_ – to do. Granted, what he was told to do made a lot of sense, especially coming from the Academy's idiot, but that didn't necessarily mean he liked it. Point in fact, it was all he could do not to snap at him, turn, bum-rush the silver-haired jounin and roast him with several well-placed katon jutsu; and if one (or two, or three, or seven) of them missed and just so happened to hit the blonde prankster, then more power to him.

He had stopped moving when Kakashi had appeared behind him, Sakura, and Naruto. It wasn't really his fault, that he froze up like that – Kakashi was a jounin, and had every reason to be pissed off with them _and _fail them, if for no other reason than because he didn't want to deal with them. The moment passed and he had spun around, fully prepared to turn the older shinobi into a pincushion with everything he had in his pouch, pockets, and belt; he had already thrown a handful, and only became aware of the very different setting he was in as opposed to less-than-a-second ago when they slammed into a tree less than a meter away from his face with a dull _thud-thud-thud_ noise.

He was bewildered until he looked around and saw Naruto eyeing him warily. The blonde pointed right and Sasuke followed his finger to see himself, Sakura, Naruto, and Kakashi standing in the clearing. He turned back to the bane of his existence and growled threateningly.

The idiot – that _idiot!_ – had used Kawarimi to replace them all with, he assumed, Kage Bunshin in henge; all of it done when Kakashi was momentarily distracted by looking down at himself. If he weren't feeling so violated at the lack of control over his own body, he would have been grudgingly impressed.

Sakura felt no such underlying respect or awe, and so lashed out in her usual fashion. She only got in one swing – which did not come even close to connecting – before both her arms were restrained by two rather annoyed-looking Narutos.

_Now_ Sasuke could admit he was impressed, if only slightly.

Sakura was struggling violently, and it only increased when she heard Naruto's voice say something from the clearing.

Naruto groaned and clapped a palm to his face, muttering about idiot clones and bad acting. Then he looked up to the still-writhing Sakura and frowned a little. "Hey, Bastard – think you can get her to calm down?"

Sasuke looked back and forth between the two before opening his mouth and ordering sharply, "Sakura: shut up and stop acting like a child."

She wilted like a dying flower, lowering her eyes sadly to the ground. Naruto shot her a guilty look before asking Sasuke how good his aim was.

"Better than yours," he replied. Naruto gave a small smirk and tossed him a kunai, despite Sasuke having far more than enough in his pouch.

"Think you can cut the bells off Kakashi's belt from here if I kept him still for you?"

Sasuke looked over into the clearing, narrowing his eyes slightly as he calculated the distance, approximate power he'd need for the throw, and attempting to factor in the wind speed, before his traditional scowl melted into a confident smirk. He looked over at the blonde, whose own smile had only gotten wider, and said, "I suppose _someone_ has to all the work for you, dead-last." Naruto let out a quiet laugh and then told him to tell Sakura something else. He did so, and had to repeat it twice more before it sunk in.

"You can do it, Sakura-chan," Naruto told her as the clones let her arms go. "You're the best out of all three of us at this stuff – you can do it."

She was hesitant. "But…I've never done it so far before…"

"Be confident in yourself, and just give it your all," Naruto advised firmly. Then he sent Sasuke a sly grin and added, "After all, Sasuke-kun's gonna be watching."

She blushed profusely, causing the blonde to chuckle to himself, before giving a resolute nod and locking her eyes upon the clearing just as her Uchiha was doing.

The same Uchiha – who would coldly deny being '_her_ Uchiha' – watched as the fifteen-or-so explosive-note-laden shuriken burst from the water and slammed hard into the earth by the soon-to-be Team Seven's doppelganger's feet. His arm was moving the moment they did so, seeing Kakashi look down at the weapons and widen his eye in realization. The kunai flew fast and flew true, and Kakashi didn't even notice when the bells fell from his belt the instant he vanished.

"Sakura!" Naruto hissed.

Her fingers performed one seal before she was replaced with a small, paper-covered shuriken. It fell to the ground with an "oof" before bursting into smoke, revealing a very satisfied-looking Naruto. "Hey, Sasuke-kun."

"Next," the Naruto standing beside Sasuke said blandly. The clone muttered "oh, right" before hurriedly standing up and jumping back into the clearing, just in time to be replaced once again with a tired, but extremely pleased, Sakura. She tumbled at the sudden change, landing sprawled at the feet of her crush.

A grin of her own matched the pink that lit up her face as she held up a fist and opened it, revealing two shining bells.

* * *

Kakashi, for his part, was both shocked and confused – as well as perturbed – when the clones hanging on to him blew raspberries into each of his ears before stabbing each other with spare kunai and poofing away. It took almost half a minute for him to gain enough brain function to think to check his belt.

The bells were gone.

He sighed and shook his head and smiled.

* * *

_Hawkeye thinks that that entire so-called 'plan' was highly convoluted and amazingly stupid._

_Irons blames poor storytelling._

* * *

"Takato-kuuuuun!" Shining black eyes swept the grassy clearing. A few stray locks of brown hair fell in front of a soft face, and a delicate hand pushed them back. "Takato-kuuuuun!" Nothing, aside from the idle chirping of birds and the soft rustle of wind, sounded in the clearing. "Oh, poo!"

Yoro Yumi crossed her arms under her developing bust and looked around, a full-on pout gracing her lips. Takato-kun had gotten away from her again, and now she couldn't find him! Why didn't he understand that it was better if he was with her? She'd take care of him…and divest him of his clothes, but he should _like_ that! Ten years old was old enough, in her opinion, and ten with twelve was far less creepy than ten with, say, twenty – if she thought that her being with Takato-kun was creepy at all, that is, which she didn't. It was sweet, it was glorious, it was _love_.

She wondered when Takato-kun would come to realize that he was in love with her, and idly debated whether he would be more enamored with her body – she looked down at her breasts and pouted a little that they weren't bigger already – or her personality – which was positively _amazing_; Ryoko-chan had agreed wholeheartedly. She decided it didn't really mattered if he chose one or the other, so long as he chose in the end; and he would! And he would.

She looked up at the sound of a crunching of foliage – for a fraction of a moment, before her eyes fully locked onto the image and it was still just a vague blur of motion, she was scared of a Bigfoot in Konoha – and saw someone walking into the little clearing. The person scratched at his head and yawned and looked around. It was when his face was facing in her direction and she noticed the black spectacles pushed up against his eyes that realization struck her.

A happy grin lit up her face and she exploded into motion, dashing over and skidding to a stop, a snap to attention and a quick salute with her eyes firmly shut, saying loudly as she went, "Hi hi, sensei!"

There was a pause before the man spoke up with a precise and pained, "What did I do to deserve having you talk to me?"

"Eh!" Her eyes popped open in shock, surprise, and hurt. "That's not very nice, sen-" Yumi stopped the moment her eyes began processing images, because from up close it was dreadfully clear that this man was _not_ her sensei. He looked a lot like him, certainly, but it wasn't him.

Her sensei, Ryuji Suimin, was maybe a head taller than she was – about the height of your average male. He had really, really dark brown hair that he wore in a shortish ponytail tied with a few wraps of what was probably nin-wire. She had yet to see his eyes, 'cause he had kept them covered with those dark glasses of his. He wore his still-shiny hitai-ate on his forehead, where it was meant to be worn. And he always made sure to have the standard issue Konoha flak jacket on, regardless if he'd been hammered the night (or day) before.

This man, though, was a head, going on a head-and-a-half, taller than she was – that made him taller than her drunk sensei; and that was another thing – he didn't look hung-over or stink of alcohol. And he had really dark hair, too, but it seemed to shimmer purple-ish instead of the brownish that her sensei's did; it hung down freely around his face in untamed straggles, reaching just past his neck in uneven bunches. Yumi decided that it looked a lot like he had taken a kunai and hacked parts off whenever he felt that it got a little too long. He had the same type of shades on that her sensei did – big enough to completely cover his eyes, and black enough that she couldn't see anything behind them – and wore them the same way – pressed up as close to his eyes as possible; it was like they didn't want people to see their eyes at all! It made her wonder what they had to hide. The hitai-ate hung limply from his neck, and he wasn't wearing the dark-forest-green jacket of most chuunin and jounin; he was wearing pretty much all black, except for the white undershirt and a few other streaks of white that could be seen dotting the uniform. What looked like a scroll was poking over from his shoulder.

"You're not my sensei!" Yumi told him in a light-hearted, admonishing tone.

"Not even a little," came the reply. "I'm not drunk."

Yumi giggled and clasped her hands together; he was quite funny. "Clearly, Mr. Not-My-Sensei. May I ask where you're going?"

An eyebrow rose over the shades. There was a short silence before, "To see dead people." When she only responded with a blank look of incomprehension, he sighed irritably and elaborated shortly, "Cemetery."

"Oh! Did somebody you know die?" She didn't like it when people died…it reminded her of her mom. A few days before she'd passed away, she had told her to be as happy and carefree for as long as she could. So she did; her mom had been a very smart woman.

The man sighed and scratched his head and yawned again. "Yeah," he said reluctantly. He seemed to panic as Yumi's face grew inexplicably sad and hastily tacked on, "It was a long time ago, but I still visit him every once in a while, the idiot."

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. She meant it. She looked back up into his shielded eyes. "Were you friends?"

He breathed in sharply, and stared at her for a long, long time. Finally, after almost a minute, he let it out in a long stream and said, just as quietly as she, and with the remnants of a long-forgotten smile on his lips, "Yeah…yeah, I'm pretty sure we were."

A smile of her own brightened her entire face and she replied, "I'm sure he'd be happy, knowing that you haven't forgotten him, Mr. Not-My-Sensei." She stopped and an adorable puzzled expression crossed her features, before she was all smiles again. "Can I call you by your name, and not by 'Mr. Not-My-Sensei', Mr. Not-My-Sensei?"

The eyebrow went back up over his shades and he gave a short, raspy huff of laughter. "Absolutely, girl, absolutely."

"Ah – it's Yumi!" Yumi volunteered happily, completely forgetting that he was about to tell her his name, bowing sharply and causing him to jump back a few steps before she hit him with her head or hair. "Yoro Yumi, Mr. Not-My-Sensei! Pleased to meet you!"

Another dried-out laugh. "Charmed, I'm sure." He watched her with a crooked little smile playing across his lips as she did three more quick bows before straightening up and beaming happily at him. He clucked his tongue once and said, "You're an odd girl, you know that?" Yumi's grin didn't even falter.

"That's what everyone tells me," she said resolutely, standing up straight and sticking her chin out and saying it with pride.

He coughed in order to cover a third laugh and looked down on her for a brief period of time. "Doesn't surprise me at all. And you're proud of that fact?"

"Anything can be taken as a compliment," Yumi told him wisely. "You just have to look at it differently than normal."

"I'm sure you're an expert at that," he observed dryly.

"I like to think so!"

He shook his head, sending his dark, unkempt, unwashed hair flailing about, and then stared into space. "Crazy little…" His muttering trailed off into a hoarse chuckle and he looked back down at the bubbly brunette. His lips quirked oddly before pursing thoughtfully; a soft hum came from his throat. Yumi cocked her head to the side and stared back up at him with curious naivety.

"Something on your mind, Mr. Not-My-Sensei?" she asked sweetly.

He was silent for a few moments, keeping his lips pursed and moving his head up and down as he looked at her. Finally, his one side of his mouth quirked up and he asked, "You a ninja, girl?"

"Yes, Mr. Not-My-Sensei!" She put a finger to her lips and thought. "Although I woulda thought that it would have been obvious, since I called you sensei, and have my headband, and stuff."

"What headband?"

"Eh? It's right-" She looked down at her waist only to find it very much not there. "Eh! Where is it!" Frantically, her hands flew over her body, checking her forehead, then neck, arms, waist again, she pulled at her skirt and looked at her inner thighs with no success, nor when she clasped her hands purposefully on her chest to check if it was possible that she used it to bind her breasts early that morning. She was met with a resounding failure, and she made a little whining noise.

"Can't find it?"

"No!" she wailed, lower lip quivering something terrible. "Maybe I shouldn't have given it to-" she started miserably, then halted mid-sentence. Fire – and perhaps something close to orgasmic bliss – leapt to her eyes and she slapped a fist into her open palm in triumph. "To Takato-kun!" she finished excitedly. "Oh, that's right, I gave it to my Takato-kun for the rest of today so I could have an excuse to go see him later and – ah!" Exactly what she had been rambling about seemed to catch up with her own mind and she whirled around in place and called loudly, "Takato-kun!"

"Can't find _him?"_ he commented in a dry voice.

"No! Takato-kun got away from me and I was trying to find him again when I saw you!" There was a sharp intake of breath when a thought hit her like lightning. She looked up in silence at the man in front of her, her eyes shining with that same intensity that they had when she had entered the clearing. In almost a whisper, but more eager and willing than she would have been if she were yelling, she asked, "Have _you_ seen Takato-kun?"

"No," the man responded reflexively. He looked at her critically, and the eyebrow crept over his shades once more. He continued, "And if I did, I'd tell him to run far, far away from you."

That sent Yumi into a fit of delighted giggles, something that coaxed the eyebrow into arching higher. When she calmed down, she looked at him again. "I should really get going, Mr. Not-My-Sensei. I have to find Takato-kun! And maybe I should see if Ryoko-chan wants to go and heckle Sui-sensei at the bar…"

The man smirked, his amusement cold and merciless. "I think you should go heckle a bunch of drunks with Ryoko-chan; causing a drunk pain is one of those precious little things in life that no one should miss out on."

"Ooooh," she giggled. "What _else_ is some of those little things?"

Eyebrow-arch.

"You come back here next week and we can discuss a whole list," he said.

"Okay!"

Caught a little off-balance by her sudden and whole-hearted willingness, he didn't get out more than a, "…uh, okay…"

"Same time?" she asked eagerly. He shrugged his bony shoulders.

"Sure, I guess so."

"Yup yup! Same time, gotcha!" she chimed in a sing-song voice, bobbing her head from one side to the other. "Sir!"

The man just stared at her for a beat before shaking his head again and giving another wheezing chuckle. "Oh, you _are_ hell in convenient female form for those drunks, aren't you," he told her. She shrugged, not really getting what he was saying, but not taking it as an insult if it was. He waved a hand at her and said, "Go on, girl – wouldn't want to keep your man waiting now, would we? And after that, you have to go hang out with your Ryoko-chan and punish drunks for their nasty habits."

Yumi was practically vibrating with energy as she nodded vigorously and turned and bounded away. She was at the edge of the clearing when she turned back and, bouncing in place, called back, "I'll see you in a week, Mr. Not-My-Sensei!" And she was gone.

The man stayed looking after her for a few seconds before yawning and tearing his eyes away. He scratched his head, looked around, and stepped into the treeline, intent on finding that cemetery; he never could remember where the thrice-damned thing was; almost seemed to move to a new spot every time he went looking for it.

* * *

"Ha! In your face, Kakashi-_sensei!"_ Naruto yelled gleefully, jabbing his finger towards the jounin and letting out another round of gut-busting laughter. The jounin in question just stared at him with the air of being incredibly bored by the entire ordeal – which wouldn't be surprising, being how he is.

"It took you far too long to finish," he said.

"We finished under the time limit, Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura snapped, her anger slightly impeded by her elation.

"Yes, you did," the Hatake conceded blandly. He took the clock back out of wherever and looked at it. According to the hands, there was still about forty-five minutes left. He looked back to the genin and continued with, "But it took you over one hour to obtain them."

"Who cares how _long_ it took – we _finished!"_

"_I_ care," Kakashi replied, his voice sharp. The kunoichi of the team fell silent. Kakashi thought for a few minutes before saying with his usual devil-may-care air, "So, would I be right in saying that you all know the reason for this test?" Three heads nodded – although, technically, only one nodded; the other shook his head like a bobblehead and the last just jerked it down once. "That's very good. And I'm proud of you for figuring that out."

"T-thank you, Kakashi-sensei," Sakura spoke up hesitantly. The jounin looked at her, frowning behind his mask.

"Did you figure it out, Sakura?" he asked, an edge forming on the question. The girl in question froze and shot a look towards Naruto. "Sakura?" he repeated, the edge stronger.

"I…no, Kakashi-sensei…" she mumbled.

"Correct. Don't take credit when credit is not due." He looked over at Sasuke. "Okay, Sasuke-kun, can _you_ tell me who weaseled out the reason for the Bell Test?"

The Uchiha stared at him for several minutes, something between hate and shame flaring in his coal-black eyes. Kakashi could practically hear his teeth grinding with suppressed rage, humiliation, and a variety of other rather negative emotions, but all the same, an extremely reluctant finger turned to point to the pleased-looking blonde.

"Precisely," Kakashi said as the finger quickly dropped back to the boy's side. "If Naruto hadn't actually used his brain and _thought_ about it for a few moments, none of you would have passed. None of you would be on my team. You'd all be back in the Academy, waiting another year for your next turn and showing everyone in the village that you aren't competent enough to become shinobi. I'd probably forget any of you exist and never see you again, save for my worst enemy, here." He jerked his head at Naruto.

Questioning gazes were sent his way; questioning gazes that were skillfully and immediately ignored. He had skill like that. The skill went even further, to ignoring questions that he didn't want to answer.

"What the heck does _that_ mean?" Like that one.

"So try and show a little respect, 'kay?" Kakashi continued without bothering to acknowledge Naruto's inquiry. "Even a Worst Enemy tm deserves respect; respect at the amount of power they wield, respect at their use of manipulation to get an entire army of people under their control, respect at the particular style they use in a fight, or respect at the way they performed some mass-genocidal slaughter to become recognized as a Worst Enemy tm ." He sent a lengthy, lazy-eyed glance at Sasuke. Could the boy take a hint? Based on the steel in his eyes, jaw, and fists, he'd have to say 'no'. Sheesh, kids were entirely too much trouble. Of course, it was either kids or teenagers, and _those_ monsters would be even _worse_ to deal with: sex lives, drinking problems, raging hormones, the whole shebang. Terrible. "Things like that. I mean, you _have_ to respect the stones that the Kage in Iwa had – to go and start a war with us. _That_ had to take a set the size of small boulders. Which is creepy, really, because the Kage at that time was a woman."

He decided to move off that subject, because Naruto's face was starting to turn green.

"Right," the jounin continued normally. He cracked an evil mental grin and said, "Alright, you two: who was the one who saved your butts from another year of stupidity?" One index finger and one middle finger pointed at Naruto. Eyebrows went up when Sakura realized what she did and switched to her index. "Uh…" Kakashi blinked. "That's right."

Naruto grinned and muttered something about it not being a big deal.

Kakashi cleared his throat and continued, "And who's going to have to run laps around the village until _I_ get tired of watching him, because of what he put me through today?"

Sakura and Sasuke gained feral grins on their faces and kept their fingers pointed exactly where they were. Naruto's grin slid right off his face and shattered against the ground.

Kakashi eye-smiled. "That's right."

"But – Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto whined. "C'mon, you totally just said how I was the reason they passed!" The Uchiha and Haruno glared at him. "Shouldn't that balance out any punishment I _might_ deserve?"

"You _might_ run laps around _Fire Country_ if you start crying about unfairness," Kakashi responded sweetly. Naruto shut up immediately.

Sasuke sniggered.

Kakashi looked at him and eye-smiled. It was good to see the broody little bugger to find something amusing. The jounin then leaned over and plucked a kunai from the ground, talking again as his hand dipped into the remains of his vest and pulled out a strip of paper. "Now, as you guys showed out there-" he waved a vague hand towards the destruction and chaos that used to be Training Ground Seven "-you know how to work together; or, at the very least, you know when to shut up and listen to a good idea every once in a while. Naruto, I know, knows how to work with others, even if those 'others' are himself."

"Yeah, yeah!" Naruto said eagerly. "Kage Bunshin makes it a lot easier than teammates or other bunshin, but that's true!"

Kakashi shook his head at the outburst. The amount of help that Kage Bunshin gave was way beyond 'a lot easier'. A few planes of existence higher than that, actually. Some people called it cheating. Of course, other people called the Sharingan a huge form of cheating. Kakashi agreed with them both, and utilized both of them to his advantage. Hypocrisy was a beautiful thing.

Sakura was looking over at Naruto curiously as Kakashi's fingers deftly twirled the explosive note onto the kunai. "What do you mean by that?" she asked.

Naruto stilled and glanced over at Kakashi, silently asking if he was able to tell her or not – it _was_ inside a forbidden scroll, after all, and could be restricted knowledge or something. Of course, he had given them a basic overview of the Kage Bunshin already…Kakashi, in response, raised an eyebrow and shrugged uncaringly. Naruto rolled his eyes and answered, "Nothing, Sakura-chan."

His face met dirt, and Kakashi sighed and grabbed the back of her dress to prevent her from harming him further in a fit of prepubescent rage. "No killing the person that saved you," he told her. It was good advice, he thought; one of the rules he tended to live by – especially after one mission, when Obito saved Rin from stab wound to the heart and coincidentally grabbed one of her breasts when he pushed her away; Kakashi had had to save the goggle-wearing idiot from her wrath when the battle was over. He had always been marginally sure that Obito had done it on purpose, despite his shyness and embarrassment towards his crush – sort of a 'just in case I die' kind of thing.

"Since you've shown that you know how to take _orders_," he said, ending with a growl as he tugged sharply on the back of Sakura's dress, sending her stumbling back. She glared at him and he returned it as he kept going smoothly, "in a battle situation, thanks to the Hated One, I expect you to show me all that discipline and stuff as well." His glare intensified, and the pink-haired kunoichi backed off, crossing her arms and huffing. He gave the finished kunai an experimental flip into the air and easily caught it without looking when it fell back down. "I expect compliance." His eye fell on Sakura. "Understood?" She looked up and flinched. He narrowed his eye the teensiest amount.

"Y-yes, Kakashi-sensei," she stuttered. Satisfied, the silver-haired shinobi looked over at Naruto and Sasuke, twirling the kunai around his finger in idle activity.

"You two got it?"

"Crystal."

"Yes, sensei."

"Fabulous." Eye-smile.

There was almost three minutes of silence, through which Kakashi did nothing except smile, before Sakura got brave and annoyed enough to speak up again. "Are we going to do anything more today?" she asked impatiently. "Because…well, you _did_ say yesterday that this was all we were going to get through."

"Yes, I did say that."

Another three minutes of silence, before, "Sensei…" she growled softly, narrowing her eyes as she started getting angry.

"Yes, student?"

"Hey, Kakashi – we doin' anything more today?" Naruto interrupted rudely, and effectively.

"Well, _they_ aren't. _You_ have to run laps."

The blonde's face fell. "Thought you forgot about that…"

"We are permitted to leave?" Sasuke asked, twisting the question mark at the end of his sentence into a tight little ball and shoving it into the period.

Kakashi looked at him a beat, wishing that he could make _his_ questions sound like statements of fact, and nodded. "Meet back here tomorrow so we can start on our first mission."

Naruto snorted. Kakashi gave him a sidelong look and smiled to himself underneath the confines of his mask. It seemed he already found out the reason that so many ninja committed suicide before reaching chuunin: _D-rankers_. Some heartbroken parents had tried to get rid of them, and had tried to start up a volunteer group to do that very kind of thing, but that idea drowned before it even got afloat; _nobody_ wanted to do those things. That's why new genin teams were _forced_ to do them, instead of waiting weeks on months on end for the occasional do-gooder to swing around and do a few.

Although he did have to wonder who was the rat that leaked such secret information to a genin…this deemed investigating. If the shinobi of Konoha had someone in their ranks actually letting the truth be known to newly-graduates…Kakashi shuddered at the disaster that could bring.

He looked back over, only to find that the other two were still standing there. Kakashi puzzled over what he had said and found nothing amiss; he had told them to meet tomorrow. So, why were they still there? You'd think they'd have dashed off, to go gallivanting about the village with child-like exuberance and perform acts of 'fun', and such things. He raised his hands and wiggled his fingers at them, as he had done during the test. They didn't move. Oh, that's right, he had said something…what was it…ah! He wiggled his fingers at them again and said, very seriously, "Be gone with you." They stayed right where they were, and muffled snorts told him that the Hated One was laughing at his attempts to disappear his teammates. "Oh, poo," the jounin whined pathetically. He couldn't do it anymore.

"Sensei."

Kakashi looked up at Sasuke.

"Student."

Sasuke just stared at him. Kakashi was sure that, if he were a more emotional and tanned and _funny_ fellow, there would be a fairly large vein throbbing in the vicinity of his temple.

"Time." Kakashi only blinked in lazy incomprehension. Sasuke set his jaw and ground his teeth, creating a dull scraping sound that caused the hairs on Naruto's neck to stand up – not that anyone noticed, though, nor did it really matter. His hands flexed and clenched tightly. He breathed out through his nose and elaborated, grudgingly and filled with quite a few negative emotions, "What _time_ did you want us here?"

"Oh. I suppose I _did_ forget that, didn't I? Thank you for reminding me, Pasty-faced, Talentless, Little Mama's Boy." He ignored the boy-in-question's answering snarl – as well as the pinkette-kunoichi's for insulting her crush in such a manner – and put a finger to the approximate position of his lips, miming thought. "Well, I'd have to say maybe an hour earlier than today: eight, nine-ish…ten-ish…maybe twelve or one-ish if I'm feeling peckish…"

Sasuke looked ready to stab him in the throat. Sakura looked fit to completely rend him limb from bloody limb. Naruto was kind of chuckling to himself, looking over at his sensei every so often with a guarded fear in his eyes; fear of additional laps around Konoha-slash-Fire Country, no doubt. Pretty normal expressions for them, really. Kakashi idly wondered what it would take to make the broody boy blush like…well…'like a certain genin Hyuuga', while certainly true, would be just too unoriginal, so…'like a fangirl getting her existence recognized by the object of her affections'? It was definitely accurate, but that was far too much of a mouthful to use as a casual expression…hmm…he'd have to think on that…

At some point he had taken one of the copies of Icha Icha Paradise out of his jacket pocket, and was leafing through it – and pulling at the pages where they were stuck together – in the vain subconscious hope that they might give him a good metaphor to use…or was it a simile?

Bah, he had never really gotten enough of an education to tell the difference. Maybe if he had actually taken a few spelling/English classes, his mission reports might come out legible. But that would make things far too easy, so not a chance in hell. It was pretty funny, seeing those guys in the missions office sweat and squirm as they tried to figure out why Kakashi wrote his reports with a pen in his mouth – because nobody could write that messily if they were writing with their hands, right? Right? – before passing it on to someone else, only to get the exact same reaction.

Well, everyone except Iruka, of course. The Academy teacher was one of the few who could actually decipher that scribbling he handed in; in fact, if rumors were to be believed, that was one of the main reasons he was coerced into practically running the missions office after school hours – if he could read the handwriting of kids six years old to twelve, it stood to reason that he could pretty much read anything put in front of his face.

Speaking of that tight-ass porn-with-a-plot-hater, where was he? He had run off looking for Naruto – he had seen him running past, grumbling about 'little orange-wearing bastards' when he took the long way to the training ground – a while ago. You'd think he would have circled back to re-check. It wasn't likely that he quit, so perhaps he hunkered down somewhere to wait the kid out? Ichiraku's, most likely, or the empty, unlocked apartment right by Naruto's, or maybe even on top of the Fourth's head. Naruto tended to go there when he needed to think, and if this unexpected trend of behavior of his continued, Kakashi expected the blonde to end up there a lot in the future.

Speaking of, Naruto – the Hated One, Enemy Number One, the Nemesis, Moriarty, the Evil, etc, etc – was supposed to be running laps! Oh, the things that would be done if he wasn't already on his second run around Konoha…

He blinked and looked up. The sun was a fraction lower in the sky than it was when he started thinking. And he was alone.

"Aw," he whined, slightly put-out. That was so unfair; he didn't even finish mental-monologue-ing before everyone left. Oh well; he'd go grab Naruto later – or perhaps earlier; earlier sounded more vengeful and devious and cruel. In the meantime, he had a report to make. "Well then…" He looked down at himself and pouted a little. He slipped his porn into its pocket and clasped his hands into a seal. He disappeared behind the brief puff of smoke that followed and looked at himself again when it cleared.

Good, now he didn't look like he had just gotten an open bottle of glue thrown at him, followed by him stumbling into a paintball arena, followed by a lake, a glass factory, and a natural disaster for one final 'fuck you' from the deities above.

Nodding to himself, his hands formed another seal and, via Shunshin, he vanished from the clearing.

* * *

"Why did you do this to me?" the wizened figure of the Third (and Fifth, depending on how you look at it) Hokage asked, staring wistfully towards the face of his successor/predecessor. "I knew letting you go through with that idea was a stupid thing to do; you go seal the Kyuubi into your newborn son, you _die_, and leave me here with the mutant-baby of yourself and _Kushina_." He shook his head and rapped his pipe against the wooden frame of the giant window, tapping spent ashes onto the darkening spot on the carpet. He breathed out a stream of smoke and continued, "Should have known that nothing good would come out of the offspring of you two…_kami_, he's got his mother's love of the same extracurricular activities – must run in the family, because I recall her saying that _her_ father was the same way – just to give everyone who forgets about him for more than two seconds a very distinct reminder that he's still there, and he looks just like you, so he can actually get away with his hellraising a lot more than he should around the jounin who remember and liked you – which was just about everyone, mind you.

"He got his grubby little hands on the Scroll just recently, too – you remember that thing, right? I found out about it a few weeks before I handed over the job to you. Had to wrestle it away from the original owner, but he was surprisingly accepting once I dropped the bomb that the next Hokage would be using it. You put it to good use while you were Hokage, too; I never found out how you opened the thing, but whatever you talked about with them seemed to really help with your decision-making. And I do believe it was them that originally coined the term 'Yellow Flash', wasn't it?" He chuckled around his pipe. "Although I think their reasoning was more for your bed-wetting habits and that one dare that had you streaking through the town, drunk, than it was for your Hiraishin." He laughed to himself again, shaking his head at the memories.

"Some of the ANBU," he continued when he stopped laughing, and affixed his eyes back onto the mountain, "that I've still got watching over your kid have told me that he's been taking to reading and talking to it avidly – means he got around to activating it where I could not. It means that he's got some like minds to bounce his ideas off of constantly. I swear, I'm going to come to work one of these mornings and find the Tower buried completely underground." He chuckled under his breath and muttered around his pipe, a funny little smile on his face, "A more exhausting child could not be asked for, Minato."

"It's not really all that healthy, you know," a voice said from behind him. Sarutobi jumped and cursed as a brief shower of ashes leapt out of his pipe and settled on his arm, before whirling around and glaring at the offending character. "Talking to dead people, I mean," was the addition.

"Kakashi," Sarutobi growled patiently, his teeth gritted as he wiped at the ashes, and all fond memories and nostalgic times similarly wiped clear from his mind, "your favorite pastime is visiting the grave of your old, dead teammate and either telling him about your life, or reading excerpts of Icha Icha to him."

"Hardly my _favorite_ pastime, Hokage-sama," the Hatake protested, raising his right hand, index (significant pointer) finger sticking straight up in the air as if to make a point; his other hand held his hardcover copy of Icha Icha Paradise, true to form. He tapped his mask in thought with his index finger and bobbed his head from side to side before saying, "But definitely in the top ten."

Sarutobi frowned. "I am both morbidly curious and genuinely worried about what other things may rank in those top ten."

"Well… Icha Icha takes up seven of them."

"Seven?"

"One for each book, Hokage-sama, plus the first movie."

The elder man's eyes widened at that proclamation. "When did the sixth book come out?" There was a long pause before both of them chuckled a little at the wordage used. Immediately after that was finished, Kakashi looked at him with something akin to shock.

"It was out on shelves almost four months ago," he said, pitying the man for his incredibly long working hours – taking him away from Icha Icha like that! How dare they! "Icha Icha Kingdom," he added with a small smile; chapter three was his personal favorite from the newest work of genius; it was the first Icha Icha so far to have an all-out, no-bars-held orgy, assuming, of course, that an orgy requires more than five people. Jiraiya had, after all, done threesomes, foursomes, and fivesomes (the fivesome had occurred in his fourth book by way of a slumber party between frisky, curious, young virgin schoolgirls). "It has an orgy."

The Hokage was quiet for a moment as he faced back towards the window, armed with a rather large tissue. When he turned back around, his eyes shimmering with unbridled creepy-old-man-ness, he asked, "Cameo?"

"The maid did not make an appearance."

"Damn."

"Agreed," Kakashi agreed solemnly. "Hopefully she'll show up in book seven – hitting stores in two months!"

The Hokage let a small smirk onto his lips. "I-"

"-and twelve days," Kakashi cut across him smoothly. The elder shinobi frowned at him.

"Don't-"

"-and a couple of hours," Kakashi interrupted again.

The Hokage was silent for a minute, scowling at the annoyingly cheery jounin in front of him, before opening his mouth and saying, "Plea-"

"-and a handful or two of minutes."

"I ha-"

"-and an assorted amount of those many types of seconds."

The Hokage was speaking as soon as the last word was off his lips. "I hate you," the Hokage said lowly, threateningly, as he glared at the jounin.

"There's a surprising amount of people who say that." Sarutobi snorted in disbelief at the 'surprising' part. Kakashi continued unhindered, his voice still pleasant as ever, "If I had a soul, I might have been hurt by your scathing comment, Hokage-sama, and subsequent scornful disbelief." There was another snort. "Ouch."

Sarutobi ignored that and stated, "You're here."

Kakashi looked around a moment before stating with faux wonder and surprise, "Why, so I am. I _am_ here."

"Does that mean they passed?" Sarutobi asked hopefully, disregarding the utter stupidity of the man in front of him.

"Of course they did," Kakashi replied, eye-smiling. "Did you really expect anything less?"

"That depends on your personal definition of 'passed'."

"Ah, too true." He thought a moment, tapping his mask with his erotica, before he eye-smiled again and said, "Well, I'd have to say that the Hated One passed with flying colors."

Sarutobi arched an old-man-eyebrow. "Naruto?"

"Who else?" was the rhetorical retort with an exaggerated shrug of his bony shoulders. "I'm under a henge right now, to cover the extensive damage that little demon did to me, my uniform, and my ego."

The eyebrow went higher, and the owner took a contemplative puff of his pipe. "Would you be willing to show me the 'extensive damage'?"

"Will the news of this event ever reach ears outside this office?"

"Not from me, I assure you," Sarutobi solemnly promised. His fingers were crossed over his pipe as he knocked some ashes to the floor before taking another puff. This fact seemed to go unnoticed by the jounin, as he reverently placed his Icha Icha back into its respective pocket and placed his hands into the respective seal. The ninja plume of smoke bloomed from his hands, hiding his form for a number of seconds, before clearing and showing him as he was.

Blink. Blink. "Kakashi…" Blink. Blink. "You look like shit."

Kakashi scowled and shot back with, "You know, that's the exact same thing that Naruto said when he saw me. Bet he's gonna be just like you when he grows up."

Horrible mental images invaded the Hokage's brain at that remark, and he wrenched his eyes away from the torn, multi-colored, sticky jounin in order to look out the window to try and calm his racing heart down. To think that Naruto…was like him? He like Naruto? Gods above, that was scary. Sure, it'd be worse to be compared to people like Ibiki, or Kakashi or Danzo, but still, the point remained.

He took a deep breath and did the mature thing: he completely ignored what had just been said. Kind of. It still festered in the back of his mind like a particularly nasty parasite, laying and growing and feasting upon the hidden vestiges of his brain matter; it'd come back to haunt him late, he was sure, but he sure as shinobi didn't have to deal with it now.

"If you would mind enlightening me as to how you got into the state you are in? I assume it has something to do with Naruto's passing 'with flying colors'."

"Yeah," Kakashi replied grudgingly. "He rigged the entire training ground as one giant trap-slash-prank. Threw around kunai, paintballs, wet cats, and explosive notes folded into paper cranes, among other things. He utilized the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu extensively, both for the creation – of which I can only assume he did last night – and the application of the giant trap-slash-prank; he informed me that he named it and every trap-slash-prank held within, and then told me that he was going to be naming each and every major prank that he does in the future. I can't help but think that he'll have a lot of things to name."

Sarutobi shakily nodded his head, eyes wide.

"He was also the only one to figure out the purpose of the Bell Test; he then relayed the task to his teammates, who aided him in both the fight and the final objective. Naruto provided the distraction, Sasuke the way, and Sakura the end results." There – that was much better sounding than actually going into detail and describing exactly _how_ they provided such things. He really hoped the Hokage wouldn't ask anything further and just let him go…

"How so?"

Son of a _bitch_.

* * *

"Ayame-chan!"

_WHAM!_

The young woman in question straightened up when a certain orange-clad (he went back home and changed before going back out again, okay?) blonde slammed into his seat, a smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. "You passed?"

"That sounded like doubt, Ayame-chan!" Naruto cried, scandalized. Ichiraku Teuchi ambled out of the bowels of the cornerstand to come take a look at their favorite customer, annoying as he may be. "Of _course_ I passed!" Ayame grinned fully and the old man shifted one side of his mouth in a lopsided representation of an amused smile. "And I totally whooped the crap outta Kakashi-sensei while I did it, too!" His smile broke into a full-blown grin and he walked to the section of counter directly in front of the blonde. He raised a hand and held it in the air.

"Good job, squirt," he said, ruffling the now-genin's wild hair. Naruto slapped it away, a grin on his own face.

"Hey, hey, hey – don't mess with the 'do, old man! You wouldn't be_lieve_ how long it takes to get it just right in the morning!"

Ayame immediately, and predictably, reached over and mussed his hair, her happy grin turning more affectionate as her fingers sifted through the fur-soft locks of her favorite little kind-of-brother. Her own hand got smacked away for her efforts – although it was softer than the previous one – and she let out a short laugh.

"Good job, Naruto," she said, her hand darting over again and racing through his hair and withdrawing before it could be slapped away.

"Stop doing that!"

"Not a chance in hell." She made another pass across his head. Naruto pouted. "And don't pout – it really doesn't suit you at all." She patted his cheek lightly before drawing up to her professional height and asking in her professional tone, "What would you like to order today, Uzumaki-san?"

Naruto grinned at her and opened his mouth. He was just about to spout out 'two beef, one spicy chicken, three shrimp, and one…vegetable? I've never had vegetable, so gimme that, though it's probly disgusting 'cause it's got no meat!' when he was interrupted by one of the most innocent and terrifying things in life.

A small scroll – two palms long, one hand wide – clattered onto the counter in front of him and he jerked back in surprise and wary suspicion; those same emotions leapt to new heights when the scroll rolled open, revealing an inked-on circle and various kanji across and around it, before erupting in a small puff of smoke and a smell of Supreme Awesome hit his nostrils. The only reason he didn't tumble all the way backward from his jerk-back and fall off his stool was because something blocked him. Something soft, and cushy, yet hard at the same time. It was only when he felt himself rise forward a little before going back again did he realize that he was, apparently, leaning rather hard against someone's – probably a dude's; either that or some chicks' really, really flat – chest. And it was at that moment of realization that the most horrible event of the entire day happened: the probably-a-dude-but-could-be-a-really-really-flat-chested-chick spoke with an eerily-familiar (and male, which ruled the rackless female option out) voice.

"He can have mine."

About fifty swearwords flew to the spot just behind his lips as a sweat broke out across his forehead, and the smoke over the scroll cleared to reveal a still-hot bowl of beef-flavored Ichiraku's Ramen. Despite the warm meal being so close, and despite him almost being able to feel the hot broth and noodles sliding down his throat and into his stomach, he shivered as some part of him, perhaps his soul, froze into a little snow-around-a-rock-ball of fear. He tried to open his mouth and say something, but the only thing that managed to emerge was a strangled squeak of mortal fear. He resigned himself to his fate – that's not to say he bloody well liked it, thank you very much – and tilted his head, very slowly, upwards.

His blue eyes traced a moss-green vest to a black undersuit, to a tan neck and then face. Two eyes, black as the night and ten times as cold and remorseless, stared straight back into his, unforgiving, unwavering, and unmerciful. A tight-lipped mouth opened from where it sat – just underneath a thin, pointed nose that remained forever marred by a clean scar across the cartilage and flesh – and it said, "He can consider it his _last meal."_

* * *

So there you have it. The end of the Bell Test. And many of my fans (I have fans! Squee!) let out a collective sigh of relief - because the damn thing went on long enough.

Does anyone know when Icha Icha Violence came out? Was it before or after the timeskip that we see Kakashi reading it? And...oh, I just went to 'Narutopedia' and it says that there are only three books in the series, according to Canon. That's lame. Over twelve years of what seems to be mostly free time, and he only manages to pump out three books. I even went through all the trouble of making up six names and descriptions of the Icha Icha collection: Paradise, World, Journey, Dreamland, Violence/Amazon, and Kingdom. Loser.

(Oh, yeah - I changed that little bit about the scroll at the end. That was not the Shinobi's Scroll which Iruka had somehow managed to filch from Naruto, as it apparently seemed to be - it was the storage scroll that he put his ramen in a few hours ago, when he ordered beef ramen from Ayame all the way back in Chapter 4. Sorry for the confusion, Cackling Mythical Bird, and all the others that were struck by a "huh?" moment; thanks for pointing that out to me! Cheers)


	10. Chapter 10

The Marauders _ a Naruto fanfiction by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

Chapter Ten

* * *

"-are you even listening to what I am saying to you, Naruto?"

"Should I be?"

_Whack!_

"Ow! What's the big deal, anyway? He deserved it!"

"Whether you think he deserved it or not, you should _not-_" _Whack!_ "-humiliate your teacher like that!" _Whack!_

"_OW!_ Give me that clipboard!"

"Teacher's only!" _Whack!_ "And if you paid attention, I wouldn't have to use it!"

"Even if I paid attention, which I'm _not_, I wouldn't be listening to a word you're saying!"

"That doesn't even make sense!"

"Shut up! It does too!"

_Whack!_

"Don't tell me to shut up!"

"I tell you to shut up all the time!"

"And you got _punished for it!"_ _Whack!_ "You never got that connection!"

"I _got it_ just fine, but your 'punishments' were always so low-key that it never really phased me!"

"'Never phased you'? What about that talking-to I gave you after you glued Mizuki's hair to the top of the classroom doorframe?"

"What, that 'respecting the teachers, even if they're assholes' bit? Pu-_lease_, that was a lame lecture anyway – and I was, like, seven at the time and besides, those were fake tears!"

"That was _not _what I said in that lecture, and those tears certainly didn't look fake!"

"You need to hang around more women, then, if you couldn't tell _those_ were fake – I've done better trying to weasel a meal out of some merchants from out-of-town! That lecture was, off the top of my head, _the_ worst performance I've ever done! And that's including that time during my second week, when I came crying to you because 'some of the bigger kids stole my lunch'!"

"You – they-"

"They were assholes, so I lied – I never _had_ lunch at the Academy. And they were idiots, so they were too stupid to get in a word edgewise or think of denying the whole thing until _after_ you had already informed them of their punishment later that day."

"Naruto…"

_Whack!_

"_OW!_ What the hell is wrong with you!"

"You _lied_ to a _teacher!"_ _Whack!_

"I lie to _everyone!_ What made you think _you_ were special enough to be an exception!"

"I was an adult in charge of my students' welfare and I expected them to be _honest_ with me!" _Whack!_ "And I expect you to act like an _adult_ now!"

"_OW!_ Dammit, Iruka-sensei, pick a different fucking spot to hit – I'm getting a bruise!" _Whack! "OW! Fucking hell!"_

"I've told you before about how I don't tolerate swearing!"

"Shut up! Gimme that!"

"Hey!" _Whack! _"Ow!"

"Ha! How'd ya like _that!_ Hurts, dun'nnit!"

"No hitting your teacher!"

"You ain't my teacher anymore!" _Whack!_

"You haven't stopped calling me 'sensei'!" _Smack!_

"_OW!_ You hit me in the _ear!_ I – hey!_"_ _Whack! "OW! O-__**kay**__,_ quit with that damn clipboard!" _Whack!_ "Do you have _any idea_ how immature you look!"_ Whack!_ "Ow! Well, at least you hit a different spot that – oi oi oi, not again, I give, alright? Okay, I give, I'm done. Just…put that goddamn thing down already!"_ Smack!_ "Ow! I said I give up! What's _wrong _with you!"

"I _just_ told you about swearing."

"You have issues!"

"I'm a shinobi. It's a _given_ that we have issues."

"That's…!...true, actually, yeah; that's very, very true."

"Are you finished?"

"Hey, I've _been_ finished; _you_ were the one going slap-happy!"

"I can continue smacking you around, if you want to continue acting like a child."

"No! Nope, I'm fine. I'm good. Perfectly adult, see?"

"You'd have to be taller to be 'perfectly adult', Naruto-"

"Hey!"

"-but I suppose it's as close as we'll get right now."

"You're _mean_."

"I gave you my ramen."

"…okay, so you're a god. But you're a _mean_ god."

"That works."

* * *

Ichiraku Ayame smiled to herself as she watched Iruka-san lead Naruto out of the little alleyway; Iruka-san had dragged him over there after Naruto made a scene trying to run away and, failing that, shouting obscenities and screaming rape. When no one moved to help him, not even the civilians passing by the eatery (everyone knew of the nice scarred chuunin that worked at the ninja school, and that little trouble-making blonde brat), he began swearing at them, at which point Iruka picked him by the seat of his pants and threw him into the alley.

The two began to walk away from the ramen stand, and she watched with a smile playing idly on her lips as Naruto stopped and slapped Iruka on the back of the head; she was sure that, if he told her about it later, he would edit out the fact that he had to jump to reach the back of his old sensei's head. The older shinobi glared down at him, and the younger stared him down (up?) defiantly and said something, stubbornly crossing his arms. Iruka shook his head and waved him off.

Naruto, grinning again, spun around fully and, cupping both hands around his mouth, yelled, "We'll see you later, Ayame-chan! This tight-assed bastard says I still gotta get punished; for some reason, he likes including me in all of his twisted little feti-woah!" He abandoned his diatribe when Iruka produced the clipboard once again and swung for his head. He danced out of the way of the hand that tried to grab and pull him away immediately after and yelled "I'll be back for more later!" towards her before yelping, ducking again, and dashing off, the Academy instructor hot on his heels.

"Naruto! Get back here!"

"You'll never catch me, coppers!"

Ayame laughed until the orange-clad hellraiser vanished from sight.

"You're too fucking cheery too fucking early," a female voice grunted as the paper curtains were pushed aside and the next customer stooped in to the stand. She thumped onto the closest stool and let her head fall on to the counter, sending a wave of rust-red hair rippling over the smooth wood.

"My sincerest apologies, Goubatsu-san," Ayame said, eyebrow raised and an amused smile at her lips.

"Oh, wipe that stupid fucking smile off your face, girly," the jounin growled from beneath her curtain of scraggily, knot-filled hair without looking up. "And why aren't you making my usual yet? I've been here a whole fifteen-goddamn-seconds already."

Ayame sighed before calling back, "Dad! Come entertain _your_ favorite customer!"

"I don't _have_ a favorite customer!" came the reply from the back.

"Sure you do! Tall, silver hair, wants to be a pirate when he grows up…" Teuchi was there in an instant, brandishing a ladle and a knife threateningly.

"You stay away from my daughter!" he shouted before realizing that there was no Hatake Kakashi in sight.

Ayame burst out laughing, and her lone customer grumbled incoherent curse words and banged a fist against the counter in an unvoiced – but certainly evident – command for food to be _brought out already _because it was taking far too fucking long. Teuchi spun and glared at his child, and she only laughed harder. He stalked past her and vanished into the back.

"Oh, dad – don't _pout!"_ she laughed.

"I'm a grown man! We don't 'pout'! We stew, we brood, and then we blow up!"

Two dirty hands slammed onto the counter as an angry kunoichi – although she refused to be addressed as such, saying that the word 'kunoichi' sounded too 'disgustingly cutesy and too fucking effeminate' for her to stand – stood up to her towering height of 5'11", almost spitting fire as she snarled, "Make my _fucking meal_, old man!"

"If you can't wait, then go dig in a garbage can, you bloody psycho!" Teuchi yelled back. Ayame held up her hands in a placating gesture when the woman's hands curled dangerously around the edge of the counter, sending spiderweb cracks dancing along the polished wood.

"He didn't mean it," she said quickly. "He's making it right now – he may be stupid enough to insult a customer, but he's not stupid enough to keep someone's order from them. Sit down, please…and try not to ruin the establishment too much?" she added, looking down at the counter and frowning as a chunk of wood fell to the ground.

Goubatsu stared the teenager down, her lips slowly relaxing from the beast-like snarl they had been in. When her expressions was somewhere in the realm of normal, she spat, "He's got six minutes," and dropped heavily back onto her stool.

Ayame arched an eyebrow. "That's one more minute than last time," she observed.

"I can cut it down to two if I wanted to, so don't fucking push me."

"Haaaai!" the ramen chef cried, giving the jounin a quick half-salute. "Thank you for your charity, Goubatsu-sama!"

"Stop that shit."

Ayame chuckled to herself. Goubatsu came around Ichiraku's Ramen every month or so and, even though not a visit passed without the older woman making some sort of threat against their physical and/or mental health, hadn't gone through with any of those threats to date.

There were actually a surprising number of jounin that frequented her and her father's privately-owned food stand: Hatake Kakashi, for one, had just recently started up again – his tastes changed every month or so; she knew that he had been addicted to taiyaki for a good three-month-stretch, once. Mitarashi Anko made sure to stop by once a year to blow more than one paycheck on her orders – she ate more ramen than even Naruto cared to on that one day; she seemed to be celebrating something, but she could never really say what it was for; and whether that was because she didn't want to tell, or because she truly didn't know, was an opinion that had been up for grabs for a number of years.

Other occasional but loyal customers included Akimichi Chouza, who was always offering to buy Ichiraku's from them and move it to a more populated district, Sarutobi Asuma, who had taken a liking to it after having to babysit Naruto for 'Pops' one time almost eight years ago, and Namiashi Raido and Yamashiro Aoba, who liked dragging a lot of their chuunin buddies over – with sake – to have a little party whenever they got back from a joint mission.

Goubatsu showed up one or two times each month, cursed violently at the other customers to drive them all out, and promptly and nastily ordered two bowls of beef ramen. She'd always swear to cut off 'the old man's' balls if her order was even a minute late, but she always seemed to conveniently forget about that promise when the ramen was set in front of her a few minutes later than the timeframe she had set. She would quietly eat one of the bowls, pay for both of them – plus a larger-than-average tip for Ayame; she claimed it was for 'having the common sense to shut the fuck up' – and leave without a word, the second bowl sitting freely on the counter for whoever happened to show up next. And as soon as she stepped outside the entrance, she was back to her usual self and swearing about some shit-brained idiot letting their dog piss on the side of a fucking building.

According to several of the other cooks in town that Ayame talked to on occasion, she did this at at least three other places – an old, nearly-out-of-business tempura stand was one, The Bukemono (one of the higher-class restaurants within Konoha) was another, and a little privately-owned sushi place over by the library was the last.

"Why the hell haven't you guys been shut down yet?" the woman in question asked, her voice like gravel. "The shit I gotta put up with to get two bowls of your slop is fucking outrageous, and you're goddamn lucky I don't come here for the taste of it."

"Well," Ayame replied, calm in the face of the faux-hostility; people had to maintain images sometimes, she understood, "I suppose because people still like our 'slop'. And if you wanted the wait to be shorter, you shouldn't be so picky." The redheaded jounin insisted on a new pot, new water, and fresh noodles to be used for her ramen.

"Hey, I tolerate your swill just enough when you _do_ use fresh shit – I'd never bother even comin' through the fucking curtain if you gave me some recycled, second-hand bowl of filth."

"Still, is a newly-washed pot completely necessary for two bowls of beef ramen? We have to put a hold on everyone else's orders when someone does something like that," Ayame told her.

Goubatsu sneered nastily, showing off every single one of her too-sharp teeth. "That's why I tell everybody to shove the fuck off when I get in here. Quit'cher bitchin'." She sat back on her stool and tapped a filthy nail on the counter.

"I wouldn't call it that; 'polite objection', perhaps."

"Pussy." Ayame glared at her and received an ugly snort in return. "Stop bein' all nice and proper and shit. Grates on my nerves more than the wait does." She shrugged and began scratching a gouge into the wood. "Pretty fucking sure you can see I don't give a rat's ass. Unless you're blind or fucking retarded, which is always a possible with you civilians."

Ayame flushed an unattractive red and audibly ground her teeth in anger.

Grinning (and showing just how much she cared about dental hygiene), Goubatsu kept goading the chef/waitress. "I mean, why else wouldn't you be able to do the shit we ninja do? What's the opposite of evolution, d'you think?"

"De-evolution," Ayame spat out, holding back half a dozen swearwords.

"Ooh, a _smart_ girl, eh?" The smile turned into a mocking leer. "The fuck're you still hanging around this shitter for if you're intelligent enough to know fancy words like that? Why, with your civilian status, you could aim high and become a _librarian!"_

Ayame's hands were gripping a ladle so hard her knuckles were white. This did not escape the redheaded jounin's notice, and she delighted in it. And continued to poke and prod, gouge and slash and hack away without restraint.

"Of course," she said, voice dripping with contempt, "you still wouldn't be able to handle the _jutsu_ scrolls – which makes that job just as useless to us as the next one." She yawned once, long and wide like a large cat, and snorted. "Why-"

"Shut. The. _Fuck._ Up," Ayame bit out. The ladle in her hands suddenly wasn't quite the right shape anymore.

Goubatsu grinned widely like a teacher with a dull-witted student that just got the lesson assigned. Which, in her twisted logic, it was.

"Good girl," Goubatsu said approvingly, dismissing the fact that the young woman wanted little more than to shove a ladle through her eye socket.

"Fuck you."

The grin only got wider. "Why isn't my food ready yet?" she asked playfully, hoping to get another few sentences of swearwords from the normally-clean-mouthed girl.

"Because you're a finicky bitch who gets a kunai in your cunt if something doesn't go exactly how you want it."

Goubatsu had been coming to Ichiraku's for over ten years, and had never once heard a curse word issued by its owners. And now, suddenly, she gets four in less than a minute?

It was about goddamn _time_.

"Old man!" she barked out, the grin only fading by a small margin. "What the fuck's takin' so long with my food?"

"Water doesn't boil in fifteen seconds! Be patient!"

"It does if you can make a fire _hot enough_ – oh, wait," she said, leering at Ayame again, "you civilians can't _do_ that."

"And you ninja couldn't make a decent meal if your lives depended on it!" came Teuchi's voice from the back. "Stop heckling my daughter, woman!"

"I'm gonna do whatever the fuck I want to in my free time; make my shit _faster_, and I wouldn't have all this free time to tear your daughter in two!"

"This is _art! _You don't rush art!"

"The _fuck_ I don't!"

"Screw you!"

"Hurry the fuck up!"

* * *

"I can't believe we _passed!_ Oh, I'm _so_ excited, aren't you, Sasuke-kun? This means we're actual shinobi now! Well, not that we weren't shinobi before, I mean, but now that we're officially on a genin team, we'll actually be accepted by others as actual shinobi instead of just kids. And Kakashi-sensei is supposed to be a really amazing shinobi, too – did you know that he managed to learn and successfully perform over one thousand jutsu since he got promoted to jounin? If he weren't such a stupid pervert, then I might actually be excited about getting taught by him." She wrinkled her nose. "By the way, what do you suppose he meant when he said that he'd probably never think about or see us again if we had failed, _except_ for Naruto? I mean, I know that Naruto's gotten in enough trouble before that Hokage-sama had some shinobi in ANBU follow him around – I can't even count the number of times when the idiot would try and jump out of the classroom window in the middle of a lecture and get tackled by one of them – and Kakashi-sensei _was_ in ANBU before he became a jounin-sensei, so maybe he still does some work for them on the side? Or do you think that he was hinting about how he was impressed with Naruto's performance during the test, and would have taken him on as his apprentice? Oh, that would have been unfair! If anyone deserves to be taken on as somebody's apprentice, it would be you, Sasuke-kun! Favoring Naruto no Baka over my Sasuke-kun…ha!"

"Sakura."

She perked up immediately, almost like a dog catching the sound of her master's whistle, a brilliant smile stretching across her face. "Yes, Sasuke-kun?" she asked happily, content for him to be bearing her presence so well.

"Shut up."

Her smile dimmed, but she kept it up even as she said in a subdued voice, "Okay, Sasuke-kun."

She would never say a bad word about Sasuke-kun, but…well…she did wish he didn't tell her to 'shut up'. It really wasn't a polite way at all to tell someone to be quiet. Even though her Sasuke-kun wasn't all that nice or polite in the first place, she did know that a gentle and caring soul rested just beneath the pale torso of her beloved, hidden underneath rippling muscles and an icy, prickly exterior. She just had to keep chipping away at it, bit by bit, until she broke that exterior and managed to spread her hands all over that mass of muscles and…uh…she meant the soul. That's right. Until she broke that icy, prickly exterior and managed to find and bring out that kind, compassionate soul he had buried so deeply in his bosom. She just had to be patient.

She could be patient. She could be anything, if it were for Sasuke-kun.

She wondered if he was proud of her for playing her part in getting the bells. She hoped so; she hoped for it so terribly. Anything to gain his attention, anything to draw out a kind word or a compliment from him, _anything_.

She could be patient for him.

She just wished it wasn't so hard.

* * *

It was nearly six hours later that a pooped-out Naruto collapsed onto his bed and stared at the ceiling. He continued staring at the ceiling until his tired eyes made the grains of the paneling begin to move around and his head started hurting again. And then he stared some more.

For his punishment of…well…everything he had done that day, really…Iruka-sensei had forced him, like the good ol' days, into cleaning the Konoha Shinobi Academy from top (the roof, where he had to retile that little bit that hung over the double-doored entrance and sweep the concrete like a motherfucker) to bottom (the basement, which held the records of every student that had ever been in enrolled in the school in one gigantic, heaping mess, which he had had to completely reorganize _again_), along with everything in between (scrubbing down toilets, sweeping and mopping classrooms, washing windows, taking out trash, removing dirty or profane drawings/words written on the desks – although, truthfully, he may have 'accidentally' forgotten to do that one and, instead, added a few of his own – and the like).

It hadn't taken long into the man's punishment for Naruto to attempt to skive off through the use of a clever distraction and a Kage Bunshin or two. Unfortunately, Iruka-sensei was well-acquainted with the blonde's habit of trying to escape his detentions, as well as the 'clever' distractions that he continuously tried at (like the one that morning), and as such had grabbed both Kage Bunshin and slammed their heads together, dispelling them, before the real Naruto even reached the closest window. And then he had hummed and hawed with a seventeen minute lecture about 'raping what you sew', or something – Naruto hadn't really been paying attention at the time – before handing him a toothbrush and directing him towards the nearest bathroom _without_ a window.

"He shouldn't be able to do that to me anymore," Naruto whined weakly. He flopped his head to the side and prompted, "Right?" A partially-unrolled scroll lay about half-a-meter from his head, in roughly the same position that it had been holding for the last six-and-a-half hours, since Naruto dropped it off before changing and heading out for some ramen, since before he was abducted by his former sensei and punished unfairly. From his position, he could see a dark blob upon the paper, but he couldn't make out anything it said. So he just righted his head and began his ceiling-staring anew, muttering an assumed-agreement, "Right."

After another minute he heaved himself on to his side, tucking his arm under his chest and levering himself up with it, and got a proper look at the Shinobi's Scroll. A frown creased itself across his lips as he asked, "How d'you guys think I did today?"

The previous lines, which were responses to his complaining about Iruka's superiority over him and went something like _Hawkeye tells the reader to just shut up and cry himself to sleep_, _Spitfire tells the kid to quit his bitching since he did deserve his punishment somewhat_, and _Irons tells the owner to nut up or shut up_, were wiped away with the next lines of their input.

_Hawkeye needs a few minutes to formulate a reply that manages to capture the sheer amount of naïve idiocy that the reader has excreted thus far._

_Sparky is getting tired of telling Hawkeye-san that he needs to treat the owner with more respect…and he says that he believes the owner did a marvelous job – assuming they are speaking about the Bell Test and not about how the owner dealt with his Academy Instructor. Because even Sparky has to admit that that was kind of sad, though slightly humorous as well, if for nothing else but the utter ridiculousness of the situation._

Naruto groaned loudly when he read the first half of Sparky's reply. He collapsed back onto the bed, facing the ceiling, and fisted his hands over his closed eyelids, groaning again before complaining, "'Marvelous'? It didn't turn out anywhere _near_ that well. I could've accepted 'good', or 'cool as shit', but 'marvelous'? You're giving the entire thing far too much credit, Sparks." He paused to take a breath. "And since I assume you're going to ask why I think that, I'll go with: it didn't freaking work right! That bowling ball was supposed to connect and split in two, not miss by thirty four _thousand _meters and cause almost half of the prepared traps to stay untriggered! Sure, it was all badass and stuff during it, but looking back on it now – _jeez_, it was almost a disaster! And not a good one, either, because a good disaster would have meant that TGH went off completely without a hitch. Which it _didn't!_"

He swung his feet over the side of his bed and lifted himself, running his fingers through his knotted hair as he kept speaking. "We got lucky for a lot of the other traps – the ones that we could still set off manually after the operation began were the ones that got missed, for the most part. Some of them, like trap numbers sixty-six and sixty-seven, couldn't be set off by anything _except '_Akimichi vs Anyone Else'. Since twenty-two screwed up, traps like sixty-six and sixty-seven, and subsequently eighty-eight through ninety-three, were unable to be used. I still have a shit-ton of stuff that I need to clean up from Training Ground Seven." He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "It'd be cool if I just left it all there for a while, and it got assigned as a D-ranker. That'd be one D-rank mission that I'd actually like." A grin flashed across his lips as he looked back to the Shinobi's Scroll. "Just think of all the things I could do to Sasuke and Sakura!"

The grin only grew further, and he collapsed back onto his mattress in a fit of laughter.

Once it passed – something which took a while longer than it had any sane right to – he ran both hands through his hair and gave his head a wide side-to-side shake and let out a heavy sigh.

"Okay, so…the only thing I can think to say about TGH is that it was way too complicated to work as well as we hoped it could; lesson learned, never make something on that large a scale ever again." He glanced over at the scroll. "And say whatever you have to say without an insult, Hawkeye – I admitted it sucked."

_Hawkeye…Hawkeye can hardly contain his surprise that the idiot reader showed an iota of intelligence, in realizing his faults. Hawkeye has to admit that he is almost impressed._

"Well…that's good news," Naruto said carefully. "I think."

_Irons wants to try it again!_

"Didn't I just say 'never'?"

_Hawkeye says that Irons never really got things until they were repeated at least three different times. And even then, those things then had to be simplified to the third-grade level – make a sound like a doggy, put your pants back on, and eat all the food on your plate to graduate._

_Spitfire liked how many times 'kashi got hit with shit; the paint, the paintballs, the catfood, the cats…_

Something about what she said rattled around in his wiped-out brain, and it took a long moment of hard, concentrated thinking to figure out what it was. Kakashi…shit…paint…cats-

"Cats!" Naruto exclaimed, leaping to his feet. Horrible images slammed into his brain as he realized that he had forgotten something at the training area – a key player to the entire prank-trap, someone who, if they hadn't been coerced into joining in, would have made the entire thing impossible.

"Son of a – Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" A clone erupted into existence, and Naruto was suddenly in a much closer proximity with the floor than he was a second ago.

"You _idiot!"_ the clone roared at him, still brandishing its tightly-clenched fist. "How could you forget her like that – so cold, and careless! Where's your heart, man?"

"I thought_ you_ were going to take care of her! You were the one who was all cuddly with her the entire time – when you were supposed to be _working_, I might add!" Naruto shot back, rubbing the back of his lightly-bruised head as he clambered up to his feet and stared himself down defiantly.

"It's not my fault she's a ball of fluffy cuteness!"

"No, it's not," the original admitted, "but it _is_ your fault that you didn't have the self-control to stay away from her for more than five minutes at a time!"

"Are we really going to get into this sort of argument again?"

Naruto just sort of blinked at the apparent non-sequitor. The anger and testosterone dropped a notch and he asked in an almost-bewildered tone, "What the hell are you talking about?"

The clone facepalmed. It spoke around its fingers, voice muffled a little against its palm. "The whole 'you're me, so anything I do is your fault because it's really you doing it' argument," it said.

"Oh."

"Yeah. Remember that, now, do you?"

"Yeah…Well, when you put it that way…" Naruto rubbed his neck and gave small, sheepish grin.

"I do."

"So you're saying that I don't have any self-control, because you showed an amazing lack of self-control yourself?"

"Yes."

"So if we have the same lack of self-control, why did I stay away from her when you pounced on her and proceeded to strangle her?"

"I did not _strangle_ her," the clone huffed, crossing its arms, looking away with a pout, and completely ignoring the question posed.

"I know a few people who would feel that it could be reported as animal cruelty."

"Liar. Besides, again, you'd just be reporting yourself. So _there,"_ it reminded him before sticking out his tongue and blowing a very confident and very final raspberry.

Naruto frowned and said, "Cat."

"Oh, shit!" The clone quickly retracted his tongue and spun towards the window. "You better be here when I get back – and you better hope that she's in one piece and well-fed when I find her, or there'll be hell to pay!" Without bothering to wait for an answer, the clone took two long strides and leapt out of the window, being careful not to touch any part of the dust-laden sill.

Naruto shook his head. "There's something wrong with me, I swear."

* * *

A soft hum filled the air, white noise against the quiet background, the whispers of a million flurrying pairs of wings and the gentle scratching of a million brittle forelimbs giving life to the darkness. The forest around the house rustled with activity nigh-invisible to the naked eye, causing the trees and the grass to sway gently in the windless night.

The rippling night was interrupted by a sharp _clack_. There was a brief disturbance as a million insects of all shapes and sizes momentarily froze before passing the noise off as unimportant. In the middle of the immense forest sat a collection of houses and homes of varying sizes (depending upon the quantity of occupants within) but only one shape, and it was inside one of them that the offending noise had come from.

A smooth, pale hand rested tiredly on top of a small desk, thin, lithe fingers lingering over a pair of very round, very black sunglasses. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the hand pulled away and lifted up, running once, twice, through a mass of tangled, knotted dark brown hair. From there, the fingers lowered and rested upon the bridge of a nose, where they massaged the area for a few moments, eyes closed tightly, before they, too, pulled away.

Shino opened his eyes and allowed _them_ to see. A hundred different eyes saw, and a million different images processed through his brain as he turned away from the desk and headed towards his bed. His jacket was easily and efficiently removed and hooked primly upon the wall next to five just like it, his sandals lined against the wall beneath.

He slid into his bed and allowed the buzzing – both of the forest and wilderness around him, and of the colony that had begun to settle down underneath his smooth, pale flesh – to wash over him.

Arms held stiffly at his sides, legs straight out, Shino allowed the murmur of the insect life to purge his body of its tension. He gradually began to relax, limbs curving in closer to his body, head rolling to one side to stare at the suffocating emptiness that was his room; it didn't used to be a problem, the emptiness, but recently he had begun to wish for something, something that he personally owned that would mark the room as his, and his alone. But that wasn't how it worked in the Aburame clan.

Things were traditional, Spartan in a way; they were kept the same, they were simply-ruled, and they were possibly going to stay like that for a long time. A colony did not develop varying personalities; difference in a colony caused its destruction from within. Different brought change, and for the famed kikai-using clan of Konoha, change was frowned upon. To be different was to be punished – beaten, broken, until the difference was the same once again, the same as every other one.

Shino sighed aloud.

Clan problems notwithstanding, Shino was not in the best of moods. A large percentage of his distress stemmed from the meal his family had shared with two Aburame elders, which had begun one hour and forty-seven minutes ago, and ended twenty-three minutes ago; Shino had assisted his mother in cleaning the dishes and helped his father to store his substantial colony for the night before retiring to his own room.

A fair number of the Elders, much like a fair number of the population of Konoha, held on to their irrational dislike for Uzumaki Naruto; the blonde had come up in conversation no less than three times in the course of the meal, to Shino's irritation. They were subtle jabs, a side-comment with just enough emotion to be picked up as hostile, and they were easily picked out from the rest of the conversation, which ranged from the two newborns of the clan who had not yet been introduced to their colony of kikai beetles, to the contemptibly miniscule amount of missions being taken by the clan, to the oncoming heat wave that was supposed to be sweeping across Konohagakure and how it would affect their colonies.

At one point, Shino had attempted to stand up for the blonde by referring to his passing of Hatake Kakashi's infamous "Bell Test", but the point was brushed off with the ease of an insect taking to flight. He had refrained from speaking more than necessary after that point. His mother and father had noticed, but had not mentioned anything after Elders Sago and Hainoki took their leave – although his mother did touch him briefly upon the shoulder before he left the kitchen. Physical contact was apparently supposed to help. It did not.

He could not fathom that it had only been one day since he had graduated the Shinobi Academy. It felt longer.

He would have to speak to Naruto soon; he could not put a conversation off for long, or the opportunity might be lost – the life of a shinobi was a dangerous one, and it was not uncommon for a genin to die on their first few missions. In fact, according to records, there seemed to be a definite trend that supported that conclusion: deaths were highest in the first few months before they eased slowly off, only leaping abruptly when there were sudden changes in mission rank.

But how would he initiate such a conversation? The question had been a vexing one, and had followed him the entire day without a valid answer. There were too many paths that it could take and too many possibilities for error for him to just walk up and talk to him about the Kyuubi out of the blue. There was a time and a place for everything, and if he had to wait for that setting, then he would. Shino was very patient.

He sighed again and moved his thoughts away from the blonde, and he closed his eyelids and allowed the comforting familiarity of the insect-filled night to wash over him once again.

* * *

Tenten took a deep breath and let herself fall to the grass. She slumped bonelessly against the training post behind her, the only one – the only thing at all, really – that wasn't stuck with twenty-plus kunai.

"It's not **fair**," she muttered, wiping her brow with the back of her hand and wincing when sweat and grime rubbed into the open cuts and blisters that littered her hand. She twisted her head sharply and was rewarded with a somewhat-satisfying _crick._ "Being the best ain't all it's cracked up to be, huh?" she said out loud to the clearing as she tore a kunai out from the post just above her head. Idly, she began twirling and twisting it through her fingers, letting the ash, dirt, and splinters worm their way into her wounds and hissing in pain when they stung sharply.

The pain made her feel a little less pathetic, took her mind off her melancholy for a moment.

She wondered if all geniuses, all of the most skilled in their field of choice, were as miserable as she was right now. She thought of Neji and the year-younger Uchiha kid and decided that yes, yes they were. Strangely, the same thought did little to improve her mood.

What the hell was she supposed to do for training anymore? She could hit a target a hundred times out of a hundred, whether static or moving or flying or whatever-the-hell-they-did, she could do the same with her fucking _eyes closed!_

Well, okay, it was closer to eighty of a hundred with her eyes closed, but _seriously_, when the hell would she ever need to worry about having to improve on that? If she were blindfolded or otherwise sight-impaired, she would have undoubtedly been stripped of all her weapons in the first place; sure, 'weapons' was really a loose term for someone like Tenten, but the fact remained that if she were captured, she'd have been stripped of everything, down to the last scraps of thinly-razor-tipped slips of paper she had hidden on her.

Weapons could be anything, from trees and buildings and anvils to things as simple as fists, a ball of yarn, and a carton of milk. It all depended on how they were used.

Tenten sighed heavily and swore under her breath. She scratched an itch on the back of her head with the chipped kunai blade and sighed. What was next for her? Genjutsu was a bust. Her taijutsu was solid; a sort of blend between the Academy's basics, Jyuuken kata from what she'd gleaned from sparring with her Hyuuga teammate for over a year, a hard defense after putting up with Lee for even longer than Neji, and a little something she'd had to invent herself which revolved around her weapons use. Ninjutsu was all that was left, aside from fuuinjutsu – she had a few simple seals figured out so far since she'd started back in school, variations of bang tags, mostly – and she thought she had a fairly steady jutsu repertoire under her belt for when things got hairy, but…well, you should always have more than you think you need, as Gai was wont to say. Summarized, of course.

She groaned as she thought of the scrolls she'd have to read to find the few new jutsu that interested her. She hated reading that boring study crap.

It was at that approximate time, when she was just getting into lamenting over the hard and boring work of studying with a full head of steam, that she heard a snap of a twig. The moment she heard it, her arm was a blur of motion and the kunai was leaving her hand like a rocket, and it wasn't for another second until another sound from the same direction processed in her mind: _meow_.

"Holy f-"

She was on her feet and looking at where she'd thrown the knife before she finished her expletive. The kunai was stuck deep in the base of a tree a few meters away. There was no sign of the source of the _meow_, which she naturally assumed had come from a cat.

_Meow._

Okay, that was definitely a cat. Unless the trees around Konoha had started mutating and making sounds like small, furry felines, which, while cool, was very, very unlikely.

"Uh…" How did one call to a cat, exactly? She was more of a dog person, to be honest. "Hello?" Yes, great – 'hello'. What the hell was she expecting, the cat to say 'hello' back? Jeez…

_Meow._

Eh, close enough.

A small orangey ball of fluff peeked out from behind the tree and stared at Tenten. Tenten stared back at the small orangey ball of fluff.

_Meow_, said the small orangey ball of fluff.

"Yeah, hi," said Tenten.

And they stared.

Things would have gone on like this for another ten minutes, at least, if a very loud (both in clothing choice and in decibel level) character hadn't chose that moment to go barging through the forest and yelling what was assumed to be a name at the top of his considerable lungs.

"Raaaaan-raaaaaan!"

Just like that.

"Who the hell-?"

"Raaaaan-raaaaaan!"

The small orangey ball of fluff managed to perk up with what seemed to be eagerness and shrink away in pure unadulterated kitty terror at the same time. It was actually pretty impressive to see.

"Raaaaan-raaaaaan!"

"SHUT UP!" Tenten roared in the general direction of the screaming.

"Hello? Who's that? Is that you, Ranran? Wait – Ranran! You can talk!" A very loud laugh. "I have a talking cat! I am SO badass!"

"SHUT-! Waitaminute…" Tenten frowned. That blatant stupidity seemed to… "Naruto?"

"HA!" came another loud and ear-busting laugh. "My talking cat knows my name!"

Tenten's palm was quickly introduced to her face. "Naruto…stop yelling and get over here!"

"Where the hell is that?"

"You fail at becoming a ninja!"

"Hey! I do NOT!"

"Then _get over here already!"_

"Okay, okay, jeez…" A minute-and-a-half later, a tired-looking Naruto stumbled into her clearing and looked around. "Ranran?" was the first word from his mouth.

"Tenten."

He blinked. "Oh. Hi, Tenten." He pointed at her. "You're not Ranran."

"Naruto, we just really met today – don't make me hurt you." Naruto nodded rapidly, even as he looked around the clearing in not-at-all restrained enthusiasm. She sighed. "Ranran's the cat?"

"Yes!"

She nodded towards the tree. "It's hiding in fear behind there; I think it's scared of you – something I can sympathize with."

Naruto just gave a 'psh' noise and a nonchalant wave of his hand and walked behind the indicated tree. He emerged a few short seconds later with the identifiable cat held loosely in his arms. The furball appeared to be very comfortable with its current situation, no matter the horrors of its 'owner' or not.

Tenten just looked at it and said, "Your cat's as messed up as you are."

"Thank you." He raised an eyebrow and said, "So, uh, how've you been for the last…what, six hours?"

"Just about, yeah." She pursed her lips. "About the same as I was when you left, except more tired and cranky."

"I hadn't noticed."

_Meow._

"I can hit cats, too, you know."

* * *

Back in his apartment, Naruto was fast asleep, and the four others continued their discussion – alone, unsuspecting, unsupervised. Their conversation would be carefully inked out before morning came, before their owner awoke.

Every scroll held its secrets; theirs' held more than most, and they made sure that those secrets stay hidden. They'd been doing so for years; they'd spent a long time sitting in the Hokage's Shadow Scroll Room, and there was very little that they had said at that time that had not been censored. One never knew who exactly would pick up their scroll next, and it was always better to be safe than sorry.

_Hawkeye really doesn't know anymore; he didn't think that someone so clearly mentally-deficient as the reader could be so oddly tolerable._

_Irons wants to know when exactly Hawkeye-teme became such a sap._

_Sparky would really rather they steered the conversation back to the important stuff, and not the rival bickering._

_Spitfire has to agree with Sparky – it really gets annoying when they're trying to have those __**serious **__conversations and all._

_Sparky would prefer if Spitfire-san didn't mock him._

_Spitfire was trying to get the original subject back from the idiots._

_Irons would like to know the opinions of the others._

_Hawkeye has no clue. The reader has given nothing to tell them who exactly he is._

_Sparky says that they all know that the owner has no idea, either; he would have told them if he did._

_Hawkeye doesn't know if he's intelligent enough to even know his own goddamn last name._

_Sparky noticed a spiral design on the back of his jacket earlier, and on one of his shirts._

_Spitfire says that that could be nothing at all, or it could be a very important something._

_Irons adds that a spiral design was used in a lot of things – something as simple to household decorations, to the signature tattoo for the special forces unit of Amegakure, to one of a hundred different bases for fuuinjutsu. He says that it would be nearly impossible to tell if it really is anything._

_Hawkeye very dryly states that it's a good thing the reader has two fully-functional legs and a local library, then._

_Sparky already warned Hawkeye-san once; he can block others just as easily as they can block him._

_Irons thinks he remembers that spiral somewhere, though…_

_Hawkeye assures him that he does, no matter how much of his own past he may not remember because of his distinct lack of attention to even the largest of details._

_Irons would like to hear about it._

_Spitfire says that she still can't believe how absentminded their Trapper continues to be._

_Irons prefers the term 'Spiderman'._

_Sparky replies that they all know he does; that doesn't mean they're going to use it. Sparky tells Irons that they will never, ever call him 'Spiderman', no matter how much he cries about it._

_Hawkeye can assure the others that if there is anyone who can create tears while being a few strings of consciousness bound to a sheet of paper, it's Irons._

_Irons would love to be the one to point out that they've gone off track again._

_Spitfire assures Irons that that is going to be happening for as long as we're able to communicate together in a group like this, so they should get used to it already._

_Irons would like to hear Hawkeye-teme's story about a spiral, and about Irons' forgotten memories due to blatant stupidity now._

_Hawkeye can certainly grant such a request. He says that it began shortly after Hawkeye and Sparky no Baka first met at the Shinobi Academy…Mitokado-teme was still teaching there, if memory served…_

_

* * *

_

I hope this lived up to what you guys normally expect of me (need to get back into the jive of things, from a four-month-long writer's block); some of it seems a little off to me, but I guess that's how some things go. I'm hungry.

The Navy is going to continue to be a problem in the way of my progress on this (well, all of them, really) story. For those who have ever gone through INSURV, and are members of Deck, Supply, Air, or Engineering, I hope you can sympathize.

Anyway, I am once again going against my better judgement and am writing more than one story at a time. At this time, they are The Marauders (duh), The Hour Unseen (midnighters x potter crossover, post-blue noon x chamber of secrets story, including Seer Harry, Mindcaster Luna, and Acrobat Cedric), and Lollipops! (artemis fowl fic that was supposed to be a oneshot involving Fowl after book 3 finding a lollipop on his desk, placed there by Holly Short as a sort of gift for him). Other smaller projects include a Potter fic about Luna Lovegood and how she's trying to rule the world, a megatokyo x naruto crossover fic of Epic lengths, a Sixth Sense-type naruto fic, and Mad Scientists Anonymous (where Mayuri of Bleach gets invited to group therapy for all those crazy wack-job lab geeks like Franken Stein of Soul Eater, Orochimaru of Naruto, Faust VII of Shaman King, and Shou Tucker of Fullmetal Alchemist).

And just for the sake of saying it: Shino is a badass.


	11. Chapter 11

The Marauders _ a Naruto fanfiction by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

Chapter Eleven

* * *

Naruto was used to his mornings going in a fairly consistent manner, following a regular pattern of waking up, falling back to sleep, waking up to one very annoying alarm clock, drifting into a lighter nap-type sleep, and waking up again and _then_ getting up about thirty minutes later, by which time he was late for class at the Academy and had to rush through the shower, teeth-brushing, breakfasting, and clothes-dressing. His mornings had gone like that for a very long time, and he had expected – even looked forward to – them to persist in a similar style for a very long time to come.

So it was safe to say that, when he woke up several hours earlier than usual to find the masked face of one Hatake Kakashi no more than half-a-meter above him, he had a strong feeling that his hopes and expectations of such a schedule continuing forevermore had all been obliterated completely.

Shortly after that sinking feeling, he screamed. Loudly.

A normal person would have been sent stumbling back by the ear-offending shriek and the subsequent thrashing and flailing of all available limbs that came next; Kakashi, not being normal in any definition of the word, managed to stay completely still, hunched just over his student's form in a totally not-creepy way, yet also dodge any and all attempts at dislodging him from his perch. If Naruto were in a more sane or rational sort of mind, he would have been very grudgingly impressed.

Being very much _not_ of sound or rational mind at the moment, he only screamed louder and flailed around some more.

Kakashi was not amused. He showed it by picking his student up by the scruff of his sleep shirt and easily tossing him off of the bed. By the time Naruto uncurled himself from the ball of twisted arms, legs, and blankets that he found himself trapped in, his sensei was leaning against the doorframe and looking at him with a glint far too cheery for whatever god-awful hour it was.

He groaned and said, while rubbing sleep-crust out of his eyes, "What the hell do you want, sensei?"

Kakashi uncrossed his arms and pointed a significant point-pointer finger up to his hair, which seemed to bear a slightly-pinkish hue; whether it was leftover damage from the Bell Test or the Hatake trying to make a new fashion statement was up for opinion. "You have laps to run, student," he said. Forget the matter of opinion thing, then.

The words took a long time for Naruto's brain to actually accept and process. When they did, the first thing that came tumbling out from his lips was a not-so-intelligent, "Say _what?_"

"You," Kakashi said, ever the patient mentor as he pointed to his student. "Laps." He pointed his finger up into the air and twirled it in a circle. Then he turned his hand over and spread his index and middle fingers and moved them back and forth. "Run." A thumbs-up. "Understand?"

Things were going very slowly, and it felt like he had the equivalent of maple syrup and chewing gum lining the insides of his brain as those things were trying to process. "No, I…what…" Naruto blearily looked at the glowing digital clock on the desk next to his bed. Numbers jumped out at him, and his mind firmly clamped down on them and shot into overdrive. "_Two o'clock?_"

Kakashi glanced over at the clock and said, "One fifty-three."

"What the hell are you doing _in my room_ at _two o'clock_ in the morning?"

"One fifty-three," he corrected firmly.

"_Why are you here?"_

The lazy, cheerful, _evil_ glimmer in his eye sparkled brighter. "You have laps to run," was all he gave for an explanation.

Now that Naruto's mind was operating at its normal pace, the thrice-repeated sentence actually meant something to him. _"Laps?"_ Of course, that didn't mean he wanted to believe it. "I don't _freaking _believe this!" Exactly like that. "_You_ want me to do the _laps_ that I _'earned'_ for beating your _ass _at _your training ground_ at _two o'clock in the morning?"_

"One fifty-three."

"_Stop saying that!"_

"Not a chance in whatever hell you were originally spawned from."

Naruto glared at him and stubbornly crossed his arms. "I'm not running them," he said. Stubbornly. With a stubborn pout set stubbornly on his lips.

In the matter of a nano-something, Kakashi was holding three kunai by the blade tips between his right index finger and thumb. His left hand darted into one of the pockets in his flak jacket as Naruto watched with a frown, a grimace, and a furrowed brow. He withdrew a few slips of paper and swapped one sheet for two kunai. And as Naruto watched, he easily began winding an explosive note around the handle of one of the kunai, talking in what would one day become known as his 'teaching voice'.

"Now, you were so cooperative when I was lecturing my other two students," Kakashi said chidingly. "It just doesn't make sense for you to be so bullheaded now, does it?" His student opened his mouth to reply, looking very uncomfortable as the inked note was secured tightly on the kunai handle, but he was cut off. "And I happen to very aware of the time, thank you very much." The mouth closed. "Now, let me explain a few things to you, as I did with the green-eyed she-devil and the pasty-faced mama's-boy: you are my student, and I pretty much _own_ you. Okay?" He began winding the second tag and winked. "So if I tell you to run until your feet bleed, or slaughter an entire building of quote-unquote 'bad guys', or slit your teammate's throat for the good of the mission, it is expected of you to do as I say, and do it immediately."

Naruto swallowed painfully.

"On any mission, at any time, something like that may happen," he continued. "Perhaps not likely on a D-rank or C-rank, but there is always an unexpected danger that could be just around the corner no matter where you are or what you're doing." He tilted his head as he finished up tag number two and added in a much lighter, normal tone of voice, "Or who you're doing."

"Ugh, you just had to slip that in there, didn't you?"

Shrug. "The mood was too serious. I didn't like it."

Naruto carefully rerouted his thoughts away from images of shinobi ambushes and killing his teammates and set them firmly upon the laps; they were a slightly more comfortable topic to think about. "So, how should I, um, be performing these laps?"

"It's quite simple, Devil-beast." The third tag was wrapped and secured to the throwable knife-thing. "You will run. I will chase. Things will explode behind you if you slow down."

Naruto stared at his sensei, a disbelieving mix between confusion and terror covering his face.

Kakashi shifted the kunai into a more comfortable, easy-to-throw grip and smiled. "Would you like to do the countdown, or should I?"

"Uh…"

Naruto barely managed to make it out of his stuck/busted/dirty bedroom window before it blew up behind him.

"Who the hell is gonna _pay _for that?" he screamed over his shoulder as he scrabbled onto the roof across the street.

"Not me, I can assure you," came the relaxed reply from behind a cloud of smoke and dust. "You're not running."

"That's a problem, isn't it," Naruto grumbled, mostly to himself. Unfortunately, being how he is, Kakashi managed to hear it and appeared right next to him, arm nestled comfortably upon the straw-blonde nest of hair that awaited him.

"Yes, it is," he confirmed.

Naruto looked up at him best that he could in the position he was in and said, "You're going to fix that problem, aren't you."

"Yes, I am."

Naruto sighed, and would have sworn on ramen that a small piece of him had just been torn apart in a bloody fury. "Well, at least I'm awake now," he said.

Kakashi stood up straight and relieved his student of his arm-rest-status and said, "I would hope so." He tossed the second kunai into the air and caught it with ease. "Now, would you like to try this again?"

"Another countdown?" came the question as its owner straightened up and rubbed his head.

"Of course."

"How about I just start running without a countdown?" Naruto asked carefully, his eyes darting to the side for a single moment.

Kakashi sighed heavily. "If that's what you want, then I can't stop you," he said. There was a split-second pause before he added, "Well, I _could_, quite easily in fact, but that'd just be ridiculously unfair; I mean, it wouldn't even be a – hey, where'd he go?"

Naruto was gone.

Kakashi sighed again. "I really hope this isn't going to be a constant thing." Then he eyed the kunai in his hand, still rarin' and ready for an explosion. "On the other hand…" Shrug. "When else would I be able to sling bombs at my student with little to no repercussions?" He could live like this.

He took off after his student.

* * *

A number of hours later, from an entirely different point of view, a certain green-eyed, pink-haired ninja-not-really-wannabe was walking down a winding dirt path. She reached a stream and crossed the faded-red wooden bridge built over it, her sandals clopping merrily against it as she went; a fairly accurate summation of her own mood, as well, as she was now _permanently _on a team with her Sasuke-kun! It was official!

Oh, and there was Naruto, too.

But she could ignore him, she could stand his idiocy just enough as long as she was with her Sasuke-kun. Although he hadn't really been acting like the idiot that he was the last few days; he had actually helped a lot with Kakashi-sensei's 'bell test' thing, grudging as she was to admit it. He still wasn't as cool as Sasuke-kun was, though. Not even close.

Sakura made it across the bridge without any major catastrophe and went down another dirt path leading into a dense cluster of trees. A moment later she was emerging into the small clearing in the forest where they had mustered the previous day, and she was already looking for her crush before her head broke through the last bit of foliage.

Instead of seeing a brooding, heart-stopping heartthrob of a teammate, she saw something large-ish laying on the ground on the far side of the clearing. The events of the previous day didn't occur to her in the slightest as she stepped out of the trees and took a few steps towards the mysterious thing that had invaded her area.

It wasn't a bag, and it wasn't a fallen tree branch. It was a – oholycrapthatwasahand! And there _was_ a hand, two of them, plus two bloodied and very dirty feet. All four things were connected to a larger center piece, and – there was a _body_ in the training ground!

She was about to hyperventilate, but managed to calm herself down enough to ask herself the question of who exactly it could be, and why would they be lying there. Besides being dead, of course, and she didn't know if she could handle dead things so early into her ninja career.

The body's feet were bare, as were its arms and legs and – and Sakura's brain screeched to a very sudden stop when she realized that whoever it was was wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and the tattered remains of a shirt. Her eyes lingered on the bared chest for longer than was completely necessary before moving up to the face, and that's when her brain completely shut down; because, lying almost naked in Training Ground 7 directly in front of her was her teammate. And we're not talking about the pale, smexy one with the legions of fangirls, either.

And since it's very hard to function when one's brain completely shuts down, Sakura fainted on the spot.

It was like that, twelve minutes later, that Sasuke found the two when he arrived. His brain had a slight hiccup when he saw Sakura on the ground within two meters of an almost-naked Naruto, but then he reminded himself that he really didn't care what they did as long as it didn't hold him back, and he was back to normal again. So he 'hnn'-ed, walked past them, and sat down and leaned back against a tree.

Sasuke yawned once and, since everyone else was doing it – although why Sakura would decide to take a nap face-down in the dirt, he really had no clue…but, of course, he didn't care, either – he closed his eyes and went to sleep. Kakashi was bound to keep them waiting for another hour or two, anyway.

Soft snores quickly joined the rustling leaves, chirping birds, and buzzing insects in the background noise of the clearing.

No more than ten meters away, a suddenly very-annoyed Kakashi skulked behind a brush of foliage. They weren't _supposed _to all be sleeping. They were supposed to rant and rave for a half-hour before he arrived, deflecting all rage and anger with the ease of a magician. And Sasuke hadn't even been affected by the state of his teammates! There was something really wrong with him, if the sight of a half-naked Naruto and a passed-out girl next to him didn't make his brain explode. Punk. And Naruto…he should've woken up by now. The laps hadn't been _that_ exhausting…

His visible eye narrowed a fraction, and he squashed the last leaking remains of his chakra and stepped out from the trees into the clearing. In seven long strides he was standing just shy of Naruto's left foot, and he looked down at the boy in cautious contemplation.

On one hand, the blonde bozo had run all his laps in a record-breaking time, and that had been the punishment assigned. On the other hand, Kakashi didn't feel like he'd paid Naruto the punishment that was actually due; he felt that there was more he needed to do before the balance was even.

So he looked down at his student enemy and he thought of terribly tricky things, and dastardly devious things, and even terribly devious things. He stood and he stared and he thought.

And that was how things were when Naruto groggily awoke from his particular state of unconsciousness almost twenty minutes later. He stirred slightly and with a small yawn, opened a single blue eye. He closed it almost immediately, and a pained expression flitted across his face, banishing the near-peace that had been there.

"Kakashi…" he groaned.

"Naruto," Kakashi greeted pleasantly enough.

"You're staring at me again."

"It would appear so," Kakashi said, quite pleasantly.

"That's the second time, just today."

"Yes, it is," Kakashi agreed.

"It's kind of creepy."

"I can understand that," Kakashi said, nodding his head.

"If this becomes a regular thing, I'm switching to a different team."

"Not a chance in hell."

"Dammit."

Naruto opened his eye back up and looked at Kakashi for a moment. Then he swung his gaze down at his own body and twitched. His other eye opened and he sent a scathing glare at his sensei. "It's, like, quadruple-y creepy since you're staring at me when I'm wearing nothing but boxer shorts."

Kakashi just shrugged. "I'm very aware of my sexuality, and I am receiving no particular pleasure from your state of undress." He shrugged again and said, "Besides, it's not like anyone else saw me staring at you, so what does it matter?"

"It's creepy," Naruto told him as one would speak to a small child. "And messed up. And I don't care if you like girls or not, staring at mostly-naked boys does _not_ send the right message of any kind." Kakashi just shrugged again and received another glare in kind. "You have issues. Deep-seeded problems. Fucked-up things."

"Oh, I know that," the man said airily, waving a hand nonchalantly in the air in a 'psh, whatever' gesture. "All us jounin do. It's part of the reason why we don't work well together."

"Because you'll all snap and kill each other?"

"Close enough."

Naruto looked worriedly at his sensei and said, "You were thinking about something that _didn't_ involve molesting me while I was knocked out, right?"

"Yes."

"May I ask what it was?"

"Of course."

After ten long seconds of silence, Naruto, teeth clenched and making an awful grinding noise, growled, "And _what_ were you thinking about?"

Kakashi just shrugged in response.

"I hate you so much."

* * *

In some compassionate act of god, Naruto and Kakashi managed _not _to destroy each other. Unfortunately, the noise they created through their three successive arguments managed to rouse a very annoyed Sasuke, and he somehow got the jounin to promise to stay put while Naruto ran back to his apartment to grab some clothes. It probably had something to do with the Uchiha-ability to deliver each and every question like it was an order to some dull-witted lower-life-form. Kakashi was both entertained and fascinated by the ability, and made his student do it again and again with a sort of natural single-mindedness, like a cat playing with a particularly surly ball of yarn.

So it was that, just shy of eleven o'clock in the morning, Naruto was seen by many a witness speeding through Konoha in nothing but a pair of heart-patterned boxer shorts. From rumors that sprung later that day, Rock Lee had sworn to run all his laps around the village in _his _underwear, every day, until…well, there wasn't really any 'until', but people felt better if they had some sort of stopping point to hope for. Even if one never came.

And it was at this point that the hero, bemoaning the giant hole where a window and a portion of wall used to be, utilized said giant hole to enter his apartment. Instead of his feet hitting slightly-dusty hardwood floor upon entering, he stepped directly into a large patch of water. When the sensation of water on skin hit his brain and the thought of "hey, my floor isn't supposed to be covered in _wet_" was produced and thoroughly analyzed, Naruto looked down at his foot.

A few seconds later, he looked at the floor in all its apartment-wide entirety and discovered, to his great displeasure, that his home was now flooded with a good five-or-so centimeters of not-so-clean-looking water.

Fantastic.

It wasn't all that hard to find the problem; a glance to the side showed that the giant hole hadn't been quite as nice and neat and concentrated as one would normally hope from a shinobi-made explosive note. His window had been taken out, as had a large bit of his wall. Unfortunately, some mook had put the water pipes on the outside wall and, as such, had been turned into little more than twisted, busted, hellish malformations of wet metal. And since pipes that carry water usually have water inside them, the fact that the pipes now bore a passing resemblance to a recently-exploded microwave meant that the water kept pumping and leaked all over the place.

The only upside to this turn of events was that it was Kakashi's fault. And that meant that there was some well-deserved retribution to be carried out in the near-future.

Sighing (in a very evil, vengeful manner), Naruto walked into his apartment, trying in vain to ignore the _splish_ and _splash_ each footfall made. He walked into his bathroom and swapped out boxers before tossing on a white shirt and adding his classic pants-and-jacket combo. He dried his feet before slipping on his socks, and had to shake his sandals through the air for a few minutes before he deemed them dry enough to wear.

He sighed again and wondered if the tenant below him had complained about water damage yet. He'd have to talk to the landlord soon – the old bastard would be out for his blood before noon came around, and Naruto really didn't relish the idea of getting kicked out of the building permanently.

He stood up. This action brought his sandalled feet into contact with the small lake that was supposed to be his floor, and he shuddered when his socks quickly and efficiently soaked up the water like white, form-fitting sponges. He shifted his feet, and his feet went _squish squash squish_. He shuddered again, swore under his breath, and swore that one day he'd learn how to walk _on_ water, dammit! Soaked socks did not a fun walk make.

He swiped the Shinobi's Scroll off a cabinet and slipped it into his pocket before exiting the room with a _squish _and a _splish_. His stomach rumbled and he glared down at it.

"No time for that," he told it. And he _splish-squished_ his way to the window/giant gaping hole. He stopped at the edge and was just about to leap out when a knock – a very hard and impolite knock, more like someone attempting to break into his home than anything – sounded from his door.

"Dammit, you stupid little brat! Yasuda's got a waterfall comin' down from his fucking ceiling! Open up!"

Ah. There was the landlord.

"You're paying for any damaged pipes, you rotten troublemaker! D'you hear me?"

Asshole.

Naruto jumped out of [the remains of] his apartment building and down to the dusty street below, where he began walking in the exact opposite direction of Training Ground Seven.

He knew that he should be heading straight back to the training grounds to meet up with his team – really, he did – but Naruto really didn't feel up to it at the moment. He rather felt like crawling into a hole in the ground and hiding until he starved to death.

Why was the hero of this story feeling like this? Well, several reasons, including the flooded apartment and the outright lack of sleep. Most pressing, however, was what he would be forced into if he _did_ go back and meet up with his team.

_D-rank mission._

Naruto felt like crying from just the thought of it.

The Pranksters had given him a _very _in-depth explanation of D-rankers beforehand, and they were some of the lowest, most humiliating and debasing jobs that could be found. Anything from babysitting to unclogging a particularly stubborn toilet to helping milk a few dozen cows was listed as class D, no matter if it deserved to be bumped up to C or not. Things only became C-rank when there was possibility of harm from two or more humanoid beings, be they bandits or mediocre assassins. If you had to go into the wilderness to catch and tame the giant tigers of the Forest of Death? That was still a D-rank, unlikely and ridiculous as it may seem.

The system simply made no sense.

Of course, _ninja_, so logic wasn't really a very important concept.

Naruto sighed.

He almost wanted to flip open the Shinobi's Scroll and see what the Pranksters had to say, but he already had a pretty good idea: Hawkeye and Spitfire would tell him to stop whining before dissolving into an argument with each other, Sparky would encourage him before running off to act as mediator, and Irons would spout gibberish that made no sense to anyone but himself, and would be completely and utterly ignored.

He didn't really need comedy relief at the moment.

His melancholy mood would have gone on like this for another hour or so had a distraction not presented itself; and luckily for him (and for his annoyed team), one such thing showed up not five minutes later in the form of two suits of green spandex.

Naruto almost ran straight into them. It was terrifying how many obvious things could be missed completely when a person was fully of dreary defeat and melancholy-ness.

The only thing that kept Naruto from running straight into the wall of tight green was two lumpy tubes of cloth wrapped around the legs of the spandex (and who knew spandex had legs? It was almost as if someone was wearing them). Those two lumpy tubes of cloth were bright orange. And as a faithful follower of all things orange-related, his mind was immediately kicked into gear and he stopped his body's walking motions a split-second before his nose would have met what looked vaguely like a very green spinal column.

Naruto blinked once, and looked up. And up.

Just as he was about to step back in order to get a clearer picture at what exactly it was that he was looking at, a voice spoke up and changed everything.

"Naruto?"

Naruto's blue eyes yanked themselves away from the large green wall and forced them to the side, where a familiar, if slightly confused-looking, face was waiting.

"Hi, Tenten," Naruto said. He gave a little wave.

And then it clicked.

Tenten. Green. Spandex. Gai. Lee. Five rules. Flames of Youth. Shouting things. Tears streaming down their faces. Green. And spandex. And _green spandex._

And suddenly, what Tenten had told him the day before made a disgusting and mind-scarring amount of sense.

Their eyes widened in fear at exactly the same time.

Then the green spandex turned around, and for the second time that day, Naruto promptly felt something warm and fuzzy and ramen-y inside his being die a terrible, bloody, agonizing death.

* * *

"Do it again!"

"Do _what _again?" Sasuke asked/said in exasperation.

Kakashi let out a very un-Kakashi-like squeal and clapped his hands together in glee.

"Hey, did you hear that?" Sasuke asked/said, looking back towards the village.

Kakashi beamed with sheer joy before allowing his lone eye to drift to the main section of Konoha. His grin faltered and slipped when he realized that he did, in fact, hear something. He nodded to his student.

Sasuke said, "It sounds like a brain-damaged swine in a slaughterhouse."

Kakashi blinked once, then twice, and then he started laughing.

* * *

"Why, exactly, did you think it was a good idea to start screaming?"

"What else was I supposed to do – give the man a _hug?"_

"No! _God_, no!"

"Screaming sounded like a pretty good option to me at the time, thank you very much! It's a very natural reaction to something that tries so hard to break my brain!"

"Okay, Naruto – here, I'm going to explain something to you very carefully." Tenten looked seriously into his eyes and said, "Screaming like a little girl is never, ever a good-"

"_I wasn't screaming like a little girl!"_

"Naruto, you really have to get over this denial stage of yours. But that's not the point! I warned you about Gai-sensei; you should have known that he and his clone accept everything as a challenge!"

"It's not like I _told _them to scream loud and shrill enough to shatter all the windows in a twelve-block radius!"

"You screamed loud, _they _had to prove they could scream louder!"

"How the hell was I supposed to know that?"

"I _told_ you that!"

"No, you didn't!"

"Well, then I _alluded_ to it!"

"What does eluding someone have anything to do with _anything?"_

"Not 'eluding', you moron! 'Alluding'!"

"You just said the same damn word! If you're not going to speak using words I can _actually understand_, then I'm just not gonna talk to you anymore!"

"Words less than two syllables, then?"

"Oh, shut up," Naruto pouted, crossing his arms childishly and huffing irritably.

"Good comeback," Tenten replied, swatting the blonde across the top of his head.

"Hey," Naruto said suddenly as the weapons mistress continued slapping absentmindedly at his head, "why'd you follow me?"

"Hm?"

"Weren't you doing something with your team?"

"Yeah, we were heading to the Missions Office; there's a C-ranker in there somewhere with our names on it."

"Yeah," Naruto said, nodding, "so why'd you follow me?"

Tenten blinked. Then, frowning, she swatted him again and said, "I don't really know." For his part, Naruto grinned. "Wipe that smirk off your face, before it gets cut off."

"You know you love me."

She swatted him again.

"So we established where _I'm _supposed to be – how about you? It's getting close to twelve, so I'd think your team's meeting somewhere around now."

Naruto sighed heavily. "Yeah," he admitted. And, in the tone of a martyr, he continued, "We're supposed to be going on our first D-rank mission today."

Tenten's face twitched, just once, before settling back into her regular cheerful expression. "Well, that's good, then, right? Your first mission!" She almost sounded excited for him.

Almost.

His eyes narrowed.

_Almost._ And that meant…she _knew_. She knew of the mass conspiracy involving D-rank missions. She was involved. She was willfully keeping information from him here, information that would, in the end, allow him to keep some semblance of sanity during the duration of his first mission; information that D-rankers were among the most disgusting and useless and downright _evil_ things ever created, that they had to do at least ten of them before they were allowed to advance to C-rankers, that even though they could be done by any normal person picked off the street it was left up to the shi_newbies_ to help an old lady with groceries, or paint a fence, or babysit a half-dozen newborn pups, or catch a cat, or clean up some garbage, or host a birthday party, or any other number of humiliating experiences while getting paid wages that made sweatshops and slave labor look like more promising avenues for financial gain. She knew that every time you asked 'why' and got the reply of 'because it's the right thing to do', you want to stab that person in the throat with a fork, because _screw_ the 'right thing to do', _someone else should be doing those goddamn missions!_

But Naruto didn't say any of that. No matter how much it was threatening to blow up his heart from the strain, he didn't really plan to say it. After all, he wasn't supposed to know about those things. He, as a newly-graduated ninja, was supposed to be looking forward to his first mission, eager and ready and prepared to go outside the village and fight off twenty enemy ninja at once while protecting classified documents that were to be presented to the Hokage _personally. _He was supposed to be expecting that everything would be just aces, perfectly fine, absolutely fantastic, and that there was no way he would be able to lose.

That was his role.

Her role was to keep the secret, and let the next graduating class have their hopes and dreams shattered, just as her class and all classes before her had done and had had done to themselves. Eventually, he would share that role. But until that day came, he could wait. Maybe.

Naruto thought of all of that in the span of approximately half a second, giving him plenty of time to respond as he was supposed to in this situation.

He grinned wide and said, "Yeah! I can't wait!"

Tenten twitched again, just slightly, and Naruto began prattling happily about the coming mission, how cool it was going to be, and how he was going to kick _everyone's_ ass. And she couldn't help but smile.

* * *

It only took fifteen more minutes of amiable chitchat before the two parted ways, each of them having to get back to their respective teams in order to fill their mission quota for the day.

It took approximately the same amount of time for Naruto to walk from the street they had been on to Training Ground Seven. He felt calmer now, too – talking to Tenten had managed to quell some of the uneasiness and despairing disgust that he had been feeling before. He looked at the situation not like something everyone had to do, but rather as something Tenten herself had managed to get through; and if she could do it, there was no doubt in his mind that he could do it too. He couldn't let some _girl_ beat him!

Though it wasn't like Tenten was just 'some girl'. She was cool.

So it was that Naruto, feeling a mite bit happier, walked into the clearing. And then he froze and stared.

Sakura was still conked out, unconscious from whatever he had originally missed – he had no clue what happened, if she got hit with a two-by-four or if she fainted. Sasuke was, leaning against a tree, arms crossed, scowl attached firmly to his lips, eyes closed and basically burning holes through his own eyelids with sheer annoyance. Naruto didn't even know it was possible to glare with your eyes closed. Kakashi…

Well, Kakashi was the reason for the freezing and staring. Although that really shouldn't be surprising, considering who he is.

Kakashi was less than a half-meter away from Sasuke, sitting on the ground and looking up at him with something approaching worshipful adulation.

There are three things wrong with that sentence.

One: Kakashi was in close proximity with a member of the same – or at least roughly-similar – sex. It is a fact that Kakashi does not like men. Boys even less, considering he never really was one.

Two: Kakashi was sitting. Kakashi was not someone who sat. Ever. Really. Some speculate that it's due to his lanky frame, and he remains standing all the time because of how annoyingly uncomfortable it would be to fold and unfold those limbs every time he got up. Others, who ignore Problem One and are staunch supporters of the belief that the Hatake is, in fact, a homosexual, have their own ideas involving a rectum a various penis-shaped objects. The rest think that he just likes being taller than everyone else all the time.

Three: Kakashi, the sensei, was looking at Sasuke, the student, with every bit of his attention, so much so that it seemed to be bordering on cult-ish reverence. Which was…well, disturbing. And so very, very wrong on so many different levels.

Naruto was not sure why exactly Kakashi was…_staring_ at Sasuke like that, and he didn't really want to know.

While it was nice that someone else was getting stared at that day, Naruto couldn't help but feel some amount of sympathy for the Uchiha – all he got was creepy stalker-staring; Sasuke was getting full-blown adoration, which was just plain wrong from someone of the same gender, and should be downright illegal from someone fifteen years their senior.

His presence went largely unnoticed, even for standing there staring at Kakashi staring at Sasuke for a large majority of five complete minutes. It took a while, but his brain eventually rebooted itself and when his eye stopped twitching he cleared his throat loudly. Sasuke opened his eyes and looked over at him. Kakashi didn't. Naruto's eye twitched again, and he said with every bit of eloquence he could muster, "Uh…hi."

"There was no possible way it took you that long to get to your house, change, and come straight back," Sasuke said immediately, his voice positively frigid.

Naruto shrugged. It was probably wise of him, because Sasuke was likely to gouge his eyes out at the next word to leave his lips.

"Kakashi," Sasuke snarled, making it a point to keep his eyes firmly locked onto Naruto and nowhere near his sensei.

In an instant, Kakashi was out of his trance-like state and back on his feet, looking over at his blonde team member with his patented lazy-eyed lazy eye. "Hello, Scourge of my Life. You certainly took your time."

Naruto shrugged again.

"Are we ready to go grab our first mission, then?" The response wasn't all that inspiring, consisting of an angry glare, a shrug, and the sound of steady breathing. Luckily, Kakashi was not one to abide by the reality of such issues, so he eye-smiled and said, "Fantastic."

He quickly began walking out of the clearing, Sasuke following with and Naruto trailing behind them both. Kakashi's voice chimed from the front of the party, "Naruto, you get to wake up Sakura."

Naruto caught back up with the rest of his team six minutes later, nursing a black eye, several large bruises across both arms, and a swelling, purpling jaw. Sakura had a skip to her step.

* * *

Thin, pale fingers tapped rhythmically against a metal plate, playing an unknown tune and dancing smoothly around the leaf insignia etched upon the shining steel. At an unheard signal they leapt from the newly-issued hitai-ate to the smooth, pale stomach that rested just above, not halting their beat and drumming steadily upwards, touching the ribs that lay underneath with the grace of a pianist caressing his keys.

"Yumi, put your shirt down."

The fingers stopped, curled into a delicate fist, and swung down to rest on a pubescent hip. The other hand did the same on the other hip. And the owner of both hands and hips glared venomously at her sensei.

The man in question completely ignored her sense of outrage and, with a very smug sound to his voice, said, "While it _is_ hilarious seeing how many different shades of red Takato can turn, some politically-correct figureheads would see nearly-flashing the entirety of the Missions Office as being in bad taste, especially considering how often the Hokage comes down here for a visit. I don't see why that would be so terrible, myself, but you know how uptight his advisors and those stuffy council members are – shove a lump of coal up any one of their asses, and you'd get a diamond two weeks later."

With an angry huff, Yoro Yumi rolled the torn hem of her green tunic back down, covering her ribs and allowing the cloth to reassume its natural position just above her bellybutton. Her hitai-ate hung loosely on her waist, tapping against her navel with its cold steel when she shifted her balance to her other foot. She ran her hands distractedly down her pants – which, admittedly, weren't exactly pants, so much as they were what is commonly known as 'short-shorts' – a few times before deeming them smooth and flat across her thighs, at which point she crossed her arms just underneath her developing bust and went right back to glaring at her sensei.

"Glaring gives you wrinkles," Ryuji Suimin told her wisely. "And I don't think Takato'd want to participate in lurid sexual escapades with a chick that's got wrinkles."

Yumi stopped glaring immediately. She glanced over at Takato, who was at that point steadfastly facing the opposite direction. If the hue of his ears were any indication, he seemed to be blushing something terrible. That cheered her up a bit. She had always liked making Takato-kun blush.

"One of these days, his head is gonna pop from the blood-rush," Muriki Ryoko said, voice dry humorless as always. "Can you imagine it? Little pieces of Takato flying everywhere."

"That would be terrible!" Yumi cried, shaking her head rapidly from side to side. "My Takato-kun, all over the place, why-" And then she stopped. She blinked three times in rapid succession before her eyes misted over slightly. "Everywhere?" she asked, her voice a little lower than it was before.

"Absolutely everywhere," Suimin said. "Into every little nook and cranny, every crevice, there'd be a little bit of Takato."

"E-every…every…" Yumi's hands were visibly shaking as she allowed the perversions to sweep through her mind, giving her thoughts and images that were certainly illegal when they involved someone as young as the little male shinobi in question. _"Everywhere…"_ she whispered. Then she shuddered in what could only be described as pure erotic pleasure.

It was a sight to see.

And Umino Iruka really, really wished he hadn't been the one to see it.

Being the only responsible adult in Konohagakure, possibly Fire Country, Iruka had made sure to take over his 1200-1800 Missions Office shift a little bit early. The rest of the chuunin would come in and conduct their shift change around 1230, maybe 1300 or 1400, depending on who got drunk the previous night.

So it was to his greatest displeasure that he saw a twelve-year-old girl, a student of his until two days ago, provocatively (or what she seemed to think of as provocatively) pull her too-big shirt up to her midriff, shamelessly exposing a great majority of her stomach for the entire room to see, and not two minutes later have what he could only assume was a very satisfying orgasm, given the shuddering and panting, plus the distracting moans that she was allowing to escape.

He just put his head in his hands and lamented the perverse insanity that revolved around his life when Yumi grabbed Takato and started rubbing up against him.

"Kids grow up so fast, don't they, Umino?"

Iruka groaned loudly. "You're their sensei – shouldn't you be the one keeping them from displaying this sort of behavior?"

"Pffft. Who the hell do you think I am, _you?"_ Suimin snorted and shook his head, grinning. "I'm not going to go and stop something as endlessly entertaining as those two are. And just think – if all goes well, I'll still be their jounin-sensei when Takato hits puberty, then the fun'll really start. Why, by the time she reaches sixteen, there wouldn't be one public place in Konoha where they wouldn't have had sex. Plus, we'd get so many accounts of indecent exposure on our out-of-town missions that it wouldn't even be funny; and by that I mean that it'd be totally and utterly hilarious."

"You're supposed to be a role model," Iruka tried weakly.

"Really? I never got that – hey, clothes stay _on_, Yumi!"

"Spoilsport," called out a grinning Ryoko.

"See?" Suimin poked Iruka's shoulder. "I can be responsible."

"There's a fine line between being responsible and not allowing a twelve-year-old and a nine-year-old to go all the way."

"To-may-to, po-tah-to."

"And why are you still here? You've got your mission."

"What, you think I should _leave?_ And miss out on this? This is comedy _gold_, Umino, and I can't deprive myself of that." He shrugged. "I'll probably hang around for another twenty minutes or so."

As it turns out, there are things in the world that have the power to turn events around on a dime; things that make the most vile of bad guys into baby-faced do-gooders; things that reduce the strongest warrior into a gibbering moron; things that turn a mob into one lone hobo asking for spare change; things that turn the sound of a raging storm into the most soothing and quiet of breezes. These things can happen in an instant, with no warning to be heard, faster than a snap of the fingers or a flash of lightning.

This was one of those times, with one of those things.

Of course, the thing in question was also called Naruto, and with one word he radically changed the situation.

"Um?"

At the sound of his voice, several things happened at once.

One: Iruka's head jerked straight up out of his arms where it had been buried. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but then, normally he wouldn't have Ryuji Suimin hovering very very close to him and needling him incessantly. So Iruka's head connected with Suimin's jaw with a resounding _crack_, sending the jounin-sensei stumbling back, cursing.

Two: one of the other chuunin on shift, by the name of Heiko Tensai, fell off his chair with a shriek, curled into a ball on the floor, and started crying uncontrollably.

Three: Yoro Yumi whirled around – so she was turning _away _from her little sex toy – and bared her teeth like a lioness, positioning herself directly between Naruto and Takato.

Four: Muriki Ryoko stopped smirking and staring at her sensei, both of those events caused by the unexpected reaction of her teammate and both of those events surprising and rare in their own way.

Five: Sakiten Takato stopped blushing, and his normal skin tone appeared faster than you could say 'his teammate is a shotacon'.

It is debatable, of course, whether or not those 'turn on a dime' events are good things. There have been several wise-ass philosophers in the past who have said that there is no 'good thing' or 'bad thing', but simply an outcome that is then skewed by the opinions and perceptions of those who view the outcome in question.

Naruto was midway through waving wildly at Iruka-sensei when his brain caught up with the rest of the things he saw. Specifically, when his brain caught up with the fact that Yoro Yumi was in the same room with him, and glaring at him with what seemed to be complete and total doom. And when his brain sufficiently processed that fact, he let out a squeak of fear and dove for cover behind the rest of his team. Once he was out of the direct line of sight, Tensai stopped crying, Iruka said "huh?", and Yumi stopped growling. But she was still glaring in his general direction.

He totally knew this wasn't going to end well.

"Team Seven, reporting for D-rank," Kakashi said, walking forward to Iruka's desk and completely ignoring the surrounding chaos. Iruka glared at him.

"You couldn't have come thirty minutes ago, _before _my shift started?"

"Nah," Kakashi said with a wave of his hand. "There's no way I'd deny you the opportunity of my company."

"Thank you so much."

"Welcome."

Once Kakashi detached from the group, Naruto found himself losing the largest portion of the barrier between him and Yumi. So he hid behind Sasuke and hoped that the pasty Uchiha would be a sufficient meat-shield should things go south.

"Good morning Sasuke-san, Sakura-san," Yumi said pleasantly enough, giving them both a small smile. Then her brown eyes flickered to the brightly-colored idiot behind the Rookie of the Year and emotions held within her gaze dropped several degrees, from 'warm, kind, and caring' straight down to 'goddamn freezing-fuck-cold death, destruction, kill kill kill'. And she said, her tone brooking no mercy whatsoever and unimaginably cold for someone of her usually-bubbly nature, "Naruto."

Naruto shivered and gulped loudly before mustering up the few shreds of courage he managed to hold onto at all times and looking over his teammate's shoulder. "Uh, hey Yu – uh, Yoro-san! Um…how've you been?" he stammered, voice coming to a squeak by the end of the question.

She eyed him coolly and said, "I've been just fine, Naruto."

Sasuke was looking at the Team Sixteen kunoichi with interest. She was, perhaps, the first person he'd heard speak to Naruto with such obvious vehemence, going so far as leaving off any honorable suffix when speaking to him – not out of a close friendship or other such similar relationship in which it was deemed acceptable to leave off the title, but of outright dislike, and the feeling that he did not deserve any such suffix. It was curious; what exactly had Naruto done to the girl to piss her off so much?

Well, by the way she was positioning herself directly between Naruto and the small boy behind her, looking remarkably like a wild animal defending her offspring (or prey) from a threat, he could only assume there was some conflict between Naruto and the boy that she really did not approve of at all.

He looked over his shoulder at the cowering blonde behind him and raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't do anything!" Naruto whined. Sasuke raised his other eyebrow. "Well…" He squirmed and muttered, "I may have exploded a bunch of toilets on my tenth birthday, and Takato may have been inside the bathroom when the explosive notes went off, and he may have been hit by a stray piece of porcelain, and he may have been knocked unconscious and he may have had a concussion and he may have been in the hospital for a few days…but I apologized when he woke up, and he accepted it!"

Yumi 'harrumph'-ed and continue scowling at him from her defensive position.

"And since then, she's had it out for me, even though it was an accident and I was forgiven for it! She acts like I'm gonna jump forward and stab him in the throat!" He peeked over his teammate's shoulder and saw Yumi glaring at him. "I wasn't saying I was _going to!_ Geez!"

"You know," Suimin said to Kakashi, his speech slightly impeded from a swelling jaw and a bitten tongue, "thith openth up tho many knew oppo-tuniteeth fo' uth both."

"That's very true. We should all go on a mission together when we're able to take C-rankers."

"Yeth."

* * *

As it turned out, Suimin was right – it took nearly twenty minutes before things settled down. In that time, Yumi had tried to stab Naruto with a pencil when he got too close to her Takato-kun, Ryoko had stared shamelessly at both her sensei and her former teacher, Takato had forgiven Naruto for the incident once again in hopes that it would calm his teammate down a little – it didn't – and Kakashi and Suimin had managed to bully Iruka into promising them a joint-team mission in the future.

After Suimin rounded up his midgets and led them out, it was much quieter and much more orderly in the room, and it took Kakashi only a few minutes to secure a D-rank mission for his team. He herded them out the door, much to Iruka's relief, and they quickly left the Tower.

He refused to tell them what mission he had taken, and as such was under questioning by the two D-rank-ignorant members of his team. Naruto, in contrast, was uncharacteristically silent, and was busy praying that whatever they had to do did not involve a cat.

In the end, possibly due to the praying, there was no cat anywhere in the duration of the mission. There was, however, a dog. In fact, there were a lot of dogs. The Inuzuka Veterinary Clinic did tend to house a fair number of the drooling, slobbering beasts, not that it was any surprise.

Inuzuka Hana met them in front of the building, and quickly introduced herself as Kiba's older sister. Kakashi was quick to speak up and correct her, as she forgot to add 'totally smokin' hot' in her introduction. For some reason, his remark did not leave her breathless, nor did it attract her to him in any way, shape, or form, and she was quick to tell him that he could leave now, as she would handle it from here.

"And you better be back in five hours _exactly_, or I'm going to get a hold of your canine summons, twist them to my will, then sic them on you and have them _tear off your fucking ballsack!"_

"Wow," Naruto said. "I didn't know Kakashi could run that fast."

"I didn't know Kakashi-sensei _ran_," Sakura added.

"You just need to give those kinds of assholes the right motivation." She looked at Sakura and shot her a grin. "Threatening their kibbles and bits is always the fastest and easiest way to have the perverts heading for the hills."

"'Kibbles and bits'?" Sasuke repeated with a raised eyebrow.

"Kibbles and bits," Hana said back, nodding in confirmation. "Come on, I'll take you 'round back."

"Inuzuka-san?" Sakura asked as the elder kunoichi led them down a small dirt path that cut through the grass surrounding the clinic.

"'sup?"

"What exactly will we be doing for our mission?"

Hana looked over her shoulder at them briefly before shaking her head. "Shoulda figured he wouldn't have told you. Right, then I guess it's up to me to break your D-rank mission cherry." She cleared her throat. "You are genin, fresh out of the Academy, and are as stupid and naïve about the life ahead of you as Maito Gai is to sex." Naruto shuddered. "I will spell this out for you: your first month will be nothing but D-rank missions. D-rank missions are the lowest of the low. Lower than that, actually. Because if you the lowest of low, you still might get paid a decent amount. No, D-rankers get you chump change, and that's largely due to the fact that the jobs you do are worth about that much, sometimes even less."

Sasuke and Sakura began looking very, very uncomfortable as to where this seemed to be going.

"D-rank missions are wild cards; granted, they're very tame, not at all adventurous, not-really-wild wild cards, but the point remains. D-rankers include anything under the sun that any normal human being can do, but just aren't willing to. This spans anywhere from babysitting to fixing the plumbing for an apartment complex to scraping up dead animals off the side of the road. Any dirty job, any pathetic and ultimately-embarrassing task, any stupid little favor from one person to another, you guys will be doing. And you will be doing it until your jounin-sensei deems you responsible enough to take C-rank missions. And knowing your sensei, you guys'll probably be doing D-rank missions for a very, very long time."

Sakura looked like she was going to be sick. Sasuke looked constipated. Naruto was wavering between total despair at the situation, and straight-up humor from seeing his teammates' reactions.

"So today you guys get to help me out in the clinic. One of you will be walking the dogs all day, one of you will be feeding and bathing them after they are finished with their walk, and the last one will be helping me out with the three operations I have to give today."

"And by 'operations', you mean…?"

"Doggy-surgery. With all the blood and muscles and bone laid out for all to see."

_Thump._

Inuzuka Hana glanced down at the passed-out Sakura and shook her head. "If you don't wake her up, one of you's gonna be covering her job," she told them before continuing down the path.

Why the hell did she have to get the wimps?

* * *

Ugh; _finally_. It only took another four months. Now, for a large majority of that time, I can blame the Navy and INSURV and a chain of command made completely of men with sand in their vaginas. The rest of the blame lies with me and my fault of reading other peoples' fanfiction instead of writing my own.

I was stuck on this chapter for four months; stuck right at the part where Naruto was in his own rut, after leaving the ruins of his apartment. Then last week I just...it all came out. Granted, I had to try three times before getting something that didn't suck too bad (truth be told, I had been considering deleting the whole chapter and starting from scratch); I hadn't intended for Gai to be...well, anywhere, at least for the next ten chapters or so, and I didn't mean for Tenten to show up again either. What I actually did plan out for, though - being what happened in the Missions Office - went smooth as butterball. I had to type the last scene six different times, though, too: first the D-ranker was helping at a weapons' store, then it was babysitting some spoiled brat, then it was cleaning out a lake of all its trash, then it was employees at a lingerie store, then employees at a sex-store, before I finally managed to force out something with the Inuzukas.

I have no idea when the next chapter will get up. Seven-month-deployment is starting before X-mas (and ending just after my birthday! Funny, yet sad, so very sad...), and as usual I don't know what kind of acess or free time I'll have on a giant ship in the middle of an ocean. If I force myself, I **_may_** have a new update of this for you before then (I'll definately have another update of The Hour Unseen, and Lollipops! - an artemis fowl fanfic that has gotten to 20 pages in about a year - will get its first chapter slapped up here, too, for sure), but I am not promising anything at all. And if you can believe me for anything, it's my promises of nothing.

I have a basic plan for the next chapter, starting off with the story skipping forward one week and giving a brief overview of that time (a sort of gift to the people who gripe about this story taking too goddamn long to get anywhere, but also a clever trick to aid myself as well). The Wave Mission begins either at the end of chapter 12 or somewhere in 13. Oh, and Naruto's going to start getting the Pranksters to map out the present Konoha, and add people to its 'database'. I can't remember any other specifics, given that the notebooks I wrote my story-stuff in are on the other side of the country. *shrugs*

Anyway, I love Yoro Yumi to death, and in case you didn't notice, she's really the main OC of the bunch - she gets to be the catalyst that brings all the seemingly-random shit in this fanfic together in a clear-ish, complete picture. Keep an eye on her. Seriously.

Again, I don't know when I'll be typing to my readers like this next, but I hope it won't be too long of a wait. Catch you all in the next update.

~troutpeoples

PS - I hope all my readers at least glance through these author's notes, because for those of you who haven't checked in in a while - I have gone back and rewritten and edited some things; a few plotholes have been sifted away, some unneeded babble removed, Team 13 disbanded (Goubatsu's still here, don't worry - she just doesn't have a team anymore; they've been permanently deleted from this fanfiction, rest in peace and all that), and the beginning of chapter 1 tweaked a little bit for the third (and last) time.

Thanks. See you when I see you.


	12. Chapter 12

The Marauders _ a Naruto fanfiction by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

Chapter Twelve (part 1)

* * *

A week had passed.

Depending on who you were and at what point in time you were asked, it was either a very good week or a very bad week. Naruto, for one, had a very good week. It had its ups (so many pranks…) and downs (so many D-rankers…) and all-arounds (so many Sakura-beatings…), but in the end he was quite pleased with the way everything went.

Team 7's first D-rank mission had, admittedly, not gone as perfectly as one would hope. After they had roused Sakura out of her unfortunate fainting spell, they had had to decide which positions to take to help out Inuzuka Hana. They ended up utilizing a very competitive game of Rock-Paper-Scissors to determine who did what. It was a move that was considered as fair as it was stupid, because while it did luck Sakura out of doggy-surgery duty, it ended up throwing Naruto into it instead. And if you lived in a village where ninety percent of the people ages ten through eighty-five only knew you as the most notorious prankster, hellion, and overall bother of your generation, they probably weren't about to go and trust you with sharp, pointy instruments and the responsibility to use them to save someone else's life. Even if that 'someone' turned out to be a dog, albeit a dog large enough to pass for a bear at first glance.

After his direct contact with the first dog-patient had been enough to wake it from an anesthetized unconsciousness four times in a row, Naruto and Sasuke had been quickly switched. Naruto ended up getting stuck with the honor of walking the dogs. Unfortunately, he seemed to have the same sort of effect on the conscious canines as the unconscious one, and he ended up getting dragged across the greater part of Konoha, holding onto seventeen leashes for dear life as the dogs attempted to get far, far away from him. It had been around ten o'clock at night when he and the dogs finally found their way back to the Inuzuka Veterinary Clinic; he was then subjected to several different and extremely loud lectures, ranging from teamwork and responsibility from a hypocritical and impatiently-waiting Kakashi, stupidity and wasting time from an extremely livid Sakura, and animal care and leadership from an annoyed and disappointed Hana. Sasuke had grunted six times and attempted to sever Naruto's head from his shoulders by glaring at him; it hadn't worked, but not for a lack of trying.

When he had gotten back to his apartment – taking care to step quietly around the snoring form of his landlord, who seemed to be camping out right next to his door, waiting for him; the asshole – he had been confronted by one very tired clone – its form unstable and in danger of popping entirely – and one very hungry kitten. He hadn't had anything but spicy-chicken cup-ramen and a rotten banana in his kitchen to serve as food for the entire day, and it seemed that Ranran didn't approve of either choices and had, thus, not eaten anything filling, substantial, or healthy in two days. He could only assume that that was a bad thing; because he just _knew_ that he would just about starve and die if _he _didn't eat for two days, let alone a small (and adorable) cat.

After he dispelled his exhausted and miserable clone, he went rooting through several dumpsters; he was able to provide his new cat with some semblance of a meal, and they had both succumbed to sleep not long after.

The next day went a little easier; he woke up at nine, left his apartment via the giant hole in his wall, and went grocery shopping. He bought a few more flavors of ramen, along with some proper cat food for Ranran. Then he had gotten back to his apartment complex, dodged his landlord, fed Ranran, and left via the giant hole in his wall once more. When he got to Training Ground Seven, it came as no surprise that he was the last genin there. Three hours later, Kakashi arrived, and after many loud complaints, they made their way to the Missions Office and picked up their second D-ranker – gardening, this time. Before it was over, Naruto learned that it actually _was_ possible to get Sasuke mad enough to spit fire, and that fire and plants did not go well together. They failed the mission. After that, Kakashi had decided that beating the crap out of his team would serve as a good bit of training, and they were all done for the day before dinnertime.

It was when he was back in the relative safety of his home that he perused the Shinobi's Scroll for the day. After remarks on the mission and everything it accompanied, various insults of various harshness, and a few pointless arguments and near-endless bickering, they went and reminded him of what they'd mentioned the day of the Bell Test. They smoothly reasoned that, since it was only five o'clock and he rarely climbed in bed before ten, he had plenty of time to go around the village and 'update' their map.

They'd told him before that the Scroll could do more than just serve as a medium for their consciousnesses to exist and converse upon – it could also form into a map of Konoha. And, even better, it could show real live people on the scale rendition, show their exact location in respect to the village by tracking their chakra signatures. The problem was that the Konoha of 'back then', when the Shinobi's Scroll was made, was not the same as the Konoha that Naruto currently lived in. There had been new buildings constructed, land cleared away, mountains shaped, natural disasters tearing away chunks of the country, and all other things; oh, and the Kyuubi as well, and the shitstorm that that thing brought down on everything.

It was a good idea, and he really had nothing better to do, so he left his apartment, leaving through the hole – really, that thing was actually pretty handy – and proceeded to do exactly that.

Before he went to bed that night, he made sure to pop over by the Hokage Tower and tell the Old Man about the giant hole that Kakashi had created via explosive note. He hadn't been pleased, and Naruto had left the Tower with a good feeling about the status to come of his sensei's bank account.

The rest of the week had gone by in a fairly similar manner. He'd seen Tenten a few more times, sometimes during training or a mission, sometimes after hours. He tried to find her Saturday to see if she was cool with hanging out on his 'guaranteed free' day, but he couldn't find her at all. On another note, he had managed to avoid any other run-ins with her team; he was incredibly thankful for that.

He bumped into Yoro Yumi once, and had ended up running away screaming when she tried to disembowel him with a pair of chopsticks to keep him away from Sakiten Takato.

He had managed to bury Kakashi in the ground up to his chin using a few explosive notes, a hose (pressurized water included), half a meter of nin-wire, and several senbon. It was an effort that went distinctly unappreciated, and Kakashi had retaliated – honestly, how childish – by stealing over half of the packet and cup-ramen that Naruto had in the cabinets of his kitchen; happily, he hadn't found the other half of his stash, which was kept within several dozen hidey-holes throughout the apartment. The man had left a rotten pear and a squished apple in their place. Asshole.

It had taken a lot of time, a lot of begging and pleading, and a lot of asking directions, but eventually Naruto found out where Hatake Kakashi lived. As luck would have it, it was an apartment complex less than one hundred meters away from his own called the Rising Sun. He didn't do anything for the time being, but slowly, very slowly, Evil Ideas had begun blooming within his mind.

At night, when he lay in bed, he thought. Sometimes he'd talk to the Pranksters about those thoughts. Other times not.

He thought about Sasuke; specifically, about what the boy had said in their team introductions. _'I envy Naruto'_, he had said. He couldn't wrap his brain around it – the Last Uchiha, envying _him_, the class dunce, the troublemaker of the town. _Why?_ Sasuke had a huge estate, all – or at least a good sum of – the money the Uchiha clan had left behind, he had private tutors and a library of jutsu, he had people who'd do _anything_ for him, bend over backwards for him. He had legions of girls who liked him and guys who wished they were like him. He was an orphan, sure, but he _had_ had parents, once, parents he could remember, and cherish, and live for. What, besides his short list of precious people, the Kyuubi, and his Kage Bunshin no Jutsu, did Naruto have? _What?_

And he had thought about Sakura, about why he liked her, mostly. He had tried explaining it to the Pranksters, but found that he couldn't. He had said he couldn't put his feelings into words. They had said that such feelings were not real in the first place; forced, not felt; that he _wanted _them, but he didn't have them, had never had them, not for real. He wasn't quite sure what to make of that.

He thought about the Pranksters. He probably thought about them the most; who they really were. How they grew up. Their successes and mistakes. He couldn't help but build them into the people they might have been within the confines of his mind, imagining and wishing and thinking.

Irons could have been the oldest out of them, but had never really grown out of his childhood. Hawkeye would have been the youngest, perhaps, compensating for his youth with his snide comments, biting cynicism, widespread disdain of the others, and just plain general unpleasantness. Sparky, the most intelligent, would have been the second youngest; a genius, he would have been called, albeit one with little-to-no common sense and the most terrible sense of balance. Spitfire would have been the most talented out of all of them – a seasoned jounin when the others were just making chuunin – with a mouth like a sailor and the fiery ruthlessness to back her words up should someone brave enough try to call her out.

Spitfire would have been a redhead, no doubt about that; how she acted, her personality, the way she flared up, she couldn't be anything other. Hawkeye…blonde, maybe, with his hair cropped short; every bit as sharp and professional as his insults and attitude. Irons would have been a dark brown – started off blonde, perhaps, but due to his boundless enthusiasm and irrational fear of water, the mud and sand and grime and everything had worked its way deep into the roots, staining his hair a permanent dirt-color; he probably had a family of squirrels nesting in it. Sparky's hair would have been white and poofy, and would have stuck out in clumps like he'd used his favorite raiton jutsu one too many times.

Irons would have been the youngest in a family of eight. Sparky would have had a brother four years younger, every bit as clumsy as he was. Spitfire and Hawkeye would have been only children.

Irons and Sparky would have been on a team together, with Hawkeye on the most-talented team of the graduation and Spitfire on the so-called 'rejects team' with two older genin that had failed three and four times, respectively.

Naruto didn't know if they were true, if any of his musings were true, but it did make him feel better; and he didn't want to ask the Pranksters personal things like that. That seemed like it'd be too much of an intrusion, if they could even answer such questions at all. He was content with imagining them into whatever, creating different back stories for them every so often just to change his perception of them; it was every bit as amusing as talking with them face-to-face.

He had taken to carting the Shinobi's Scroll with him wherever he went; if he was wearing something other than his trademark jacket-and-pants combo and didn't have giant pockets to stuff the scroll into, he tied it to his waist, or held it, or wound a bit of rope to it and slung it over his shoulder like a miniature rucksack.

He had taken their suggestion to 'map out' Konoha seriously, and had spent a good portion of his time off doing so. He had never thought that Konoha could seem so damn _big!_ – but when he was plodding around slowly, like a civilian, and describing everything from the trees to the street to the length, width, and heights of the surrounding buildings, it was like he saw his village in a whole new extra-large light; it was absolutely _massive_, and he didn't think he'd ever felt the responsibility to protect it quite like he did then.

Bumping into people and running into telephone poles and street-side vendors and various walls was a common occurrence as he wandered around; given that his attention shifted from the buildings to the ground to the map, mostly, and given Naruto's attention span and overall awareness, this wasn't too surprising. Nevermind the fact that, while he went around describing Konoha, the mostly-blank stretch of parchment filled itself in with midnight-blue ink, spreading out from the depths of the paper and twisting and curling around itself, efficiently forming everything that was said with a sort of grace that was almost mesmerizing. And really, really cool.

He had started at the southern entrance, at the Main Gate – because that had seemed like a very good place to start at. By the time the week had passed, he had just over a quarter of Konoha filled; the south-eastern section of the village, what he had finished, was mostly inhabited by civilians, and contained most of the village's hotels and stores. His apartment was a few hundred meters from the vaguely-drawn border of the south-eastern and south-western sectors.

The north-east held the majority of the major shinobi clans: the Uchiha (well, the compound was still there, at any rate), the Akimichi (living right next to a chain of their own restaurants, mostly frequented by themselves), the Hyuuga (as far away from the Uchiha as they could physically get without moving to another lesser sector), the Aburame (separated from everyone else by a kilometer of forest, almost behind the Hokage Mountain), and the Nara (right in the middle of the north-eastern sector, just brushing the same forest that the Aburame were enclosed within). Twenty-two out of the thirty official Training Grounds were in the north-east sector.

The north-west sector belonged to the shinobi – rarely did a civilian wander up there. It was the section that held the Hokage Tower, and it was said that there, somewhere, was where the ANBU Headquarters were located; no one really knew for sure. It held weapon shops and ninja bars, and any grocery store there was most likely to sell ration-bars and bandages than anything else. The Inuzuka Veterinary Clinic, as he'd found out, was on the outskirts of the village in this sector.

The south-western sector was home to a few rich civilians and most of the lesser-family shinobi; it also held the majority of bars and bathouses – which really put the intelligence and sanity of whoever had built that section into question – as well as most of the civilian schools. It was this section of the village that Naruto was currently mapping out.

_Irons boldly interjects that he will now shift the story from the necessary summary/overview/time-skip description and the somewhat-real-time events._

Naruto looked at the Prankster's comment that had appeared in the bottom-right corner of the map, where it seemed to float over the area labeled 'training ground 13', and said with his usual eloquence, "Huh?"

_Irons does admit that the transition wasn't nearly as smooth as he would have preferred, but firmly states that the past is the past and this tale must go on!_

"What?"

_Spitfire tells the kid to watch out for that post._

"Say wha-?" and Naruto walked straight into a telephone pole. He almost fell backwards, but managed to maintain his admittedly-terrible balance. He gingerly rubbed his nose as he stepped around the pole and continued walking, idly removing a few small bits of wood that had worked their way into the tender cartilage of his nose.

He had pretty much been desensitized to this kind of occurrence within the past week. It had happened too often for him to get upset about it or even pay it any real amount of attention, and the Pranksters had given up ribbing him about it after he ran into the twenty-seventh pole, sixth street-vendor, and fifteenth wall in the span of two minutes. At that point, even Hawkeye had to admit that it was too pathetic to even bother making fun.

Unfortunately, Hawkeye never stayed quiet for long, and his list of things to mock was as vast as Sasuke's ego and as broad as Kakashi's definition of 'foreplay'.

_Hawkeye thinks that guy's tie is facetious._

Naruto raised an eyebrow and looked up just in time to see a man – a civilian businessman, perhaps, unless it was just another eccentric shinobi – walking past him with a blue/khaki-striped tie with itty-bitty kunai and shuriken forming the stripe borders. He had to give that one to the Prankster, no matter how tame a put-down it was; the tie was ridiculous, to say the least, and failed to show any form of fashion sense whatsoever – not that he was one who could have a go at someone else's fashion sense, considering his own orange-bedecked ensemble.

The guy with the tacky tie passed, and Naruto frowned slightly as a thought struck him. It wasn't like the Pranksters hadn't exhibited a twisted sense of 'sentience', as Sparky had put it, many times before, commenting on one thing or another, but it wasn't often when they made out as if they could do more than just vaguely sense things; rare was it that they seemed to actually see things, as Hawkeye seemed to have just displayed. Why was that?

They'd known what Sasuke looked like in the duration of the Bell Test, but had had to ask Naruto what Kakashi looked like beforehand, when they'd been with him the day before that for the whole 'first team meeting' thing. Hawkeye was able to see that guy's tie less than a meter away, but they couldn't visualize the buildings and other structures for themselves. Why? Did it have something to do with chakra? Distance? Was it about having a soul, or was it a system based on body heat?

He voiced his jumbled thoughts, and there was a stretch of silence. Naruto, no longer paying attention to his surroundings, ran into a fruit vendor's stall; he was forced to buy the four apples and three pears that had been splattered against the ground due to his collision. He then decided that it would be wiser to stop moving when he was more focused on something in his hands than the world around him. He ducked into a small alley and leaned against the surprisingly-clean wall and looked at the Scroll again.

_Hawkeye says that their entire being is solely chakra-based, and that everything they do revolves around that and the seals inscribed within._

_Spitfire adds that Sparky was the main mind for the seals, with a side of help from Hawkeye, and that the only credit that could go to her and Irons was motivation (of the torture and other miscellaneous pain-utilizing kinds) and comedy relief, respectively._

_Sparky would like to say that Hawkeye and Spitfire are correct; the system is based upon chakra and the seals that direct that chakra in specified ways. There are easily over a thousand seals that make up the entirety of the Shinobi's Scroll, with a hundred or so groupings that regulate each designated duty – from the simple task of censoring their words from outsiders, to the definitely-more complex task of implanting their personalities and memories into the matrix, to the totally-not-lame task of their 'insulting an unauthorized outside person' feature, to the relatively-mundane but still impressive task of their overall ability of sensing and 'seeing' things within a particular distance._

"So it _is_ based on how far away something is?"

_Spitfire says that the 'seeing' part is, but the 'sensing' portion is, as the kid already knew, chakra-based and thus can utilize a far wider area._

_Hawkeye tells the reader that they are able to 'see' only up to a meter away from the heart of the Scroll, whereas they can 'sense' upwards of a twenty kilometer diameter._

_Sparky adds that it's actually closer to thirty kilometers in diameter, but the map would lose some of its effectiveness at such a long range and would begin to mix up some chakra signals and misinterpret others. He states that there's only so far a blend of seals and juiced-up chakra can extend a shinobi's senses, even if it is in actuality four different and very talented shinobi senses that have been amalgamated together in a few particular places in order to simply add up their abilities to one much-larger sum._

Naruto furrowed his brow and tried to process that last sentence. When he realized that he probably looked constipated from the effort, he just plain gave up and asked one of the Pranksters to dumb Sparky's additive down, just a little. Irons jumped at the opportunity.

_Irons is plenty willing to dumb it down for the owner, being just as unintelligent –_

A large line of ink scratched across the page as Irons was interrupted.

_Hawkeye interjects that Irons' idiocy doesn't even compare to the reader's, and that when compared, Irons actually seems smart enough to be able to tie his shoes __**without**__ drooling all over himself first._

"Hey!" Naruto shouted. Another vicious scratch of ink skipped over the paper, looking exactly like two people fighting for control of a pen or brush to continue writing with. The ink stopped jumping across the page and continued with Irons' statement as if nothing had happened.

_- as he is. Sparky-kun was saying that the senses of the Scroll are able to extend so far because the Prankster's own 'senses' were all combined together through the use of a bunch of seals._

"See, now why couldn't he just say that in the first place?" he whined, just a little.

_Hawkeye says that Sparky no Baka enjoys using unnecessarily-big words in order to give the illusion of him being the intelligent one of the group._

_Sparky denies that and states that it is Hawkeye-san who always attempts to make himself look important and intellectual, and that most people see through the act due to him being an ass._

_Hawkeye nastily retorts that Sparky no Baka is ignorant and childish, and he would much rather be an unloved ass of a master than an ignorant, well-liked novice._

Naruto snapped the scroll shut.

Sometimes, even he couldn't stand the lengths that Hawkeye went to piss people off; and the Prankster had the gall to go and wonder, sometimes, _why_ people didn't like him. He didn't know about Hawkeye, but Naruto would much rather be the childish, idiotic, smothered-with-friends student. He couldn't imagine living all alone, cut off from everyone else, bitter and jaded like Hawkeye seemed to be. He'd been alone before – he didn't think he'd be able to bear it if he went back to that.

He put the scroll in his pocket and emerged from the alley, ready and willing to take a break from mapping and from the Pranksters' never-ending bickering. Sometimes they reminded him of the banter between himself and Sasuke, which was amusing and somewhat comforting, but other times they just went _too far_, and he had to wonder why they had all been friends in the first place with all that fighting going on.

Frankly, he blamed his ignorance on the complete lack of social interaction when he was young. Isolation was not a good environment for a kid to grow up in, especially if that kid was expected to be able to act just like every other normal kid when he got older.

He shook his head and walked down the street. Now that his attention was pointedly _off_ of the Pranksters and their amazing map, he was well aware of the looks he was getting – the looks he always got. They ranged from disapproval, to distaste, to outright dislike, then malice, then raw hate.

He didn't see those last few so often anymore. It was a definite improvement from some of his earlier years, when the Uchiha Police Force had still been patrolling around; his presence had been the main cause of conflict between them and the Old Man's ANBU.

He wondered if the elderly Hokage had given Kakashi a stern talking-to about the giant hole in his apartment yet, or if that was something he'd still be able to get tickets to. He really wanted to see that happen.

As he walked through the village, he took it all in like he'd so rarely ever done before; from the vantage point of a civilian, everything he saw was about one-point-five-_million_ times more badass! He could look up at the tops of buildings and spot shinobi traveling across the roofs; he could see the Hokage Monument towering over everything else, watching over the rest of the town and ensuring it stayed safe; similarly, the Hokage Tower stuck up from the smaller buildings like a raised thumb, tall and imposing and comforting; he heard an explosion in the distance, and marveled at the fact that none of the regular people around him screamed or panicked. They knew they were protected. They knew they'd be kept safe.

It was a comforting thought to have.

Naruto smiled, discrete and private, and he walked on.

* * *

He woke to someone knocking on his door.

Of course, it wasn't so much someone knocking as it was someone banging against his door with wild and probably-gleeful abandon. He could practically hear the frame cracking and could easily imagine the hinges twisting into some very improper shapes.

Unlike _some _people he knew, his rise from sleep was a swift and easy procedure. He did not – never did, really – go from 'asleep' to 'conscious' to 'waking up' to 'sleepy' to 'drowsy' and _then _to 'awake'; his starting point was something essentially between 'asleep' and 'conscious', anyway – what some of the quirkier jounin had over the years dubbed 'shinobi-sleep', it was a form of unconsciousness that let them rest but also allowed them to keep their high levels of necessary alertness, something that was kind of important on higher-ranking missions. So when he woke up, he went from the 'shinobi-sleep' straight to 'up, awake, and aware'. Such was the life of a tried-and-used-jounin.

He sighed heavily and folded his arms behind his head. He recognized that knocking; he was treated to it every time he wound up back in Konoha, two or three days after he got back from his latest mission. He blinked and frowned slightly when his mind took catalogue of the date.

She was a day early this time; dammit, she must've been tipped off. He _knew_ introducing those two had been a bad idea. Now she was privy to all sorts of annoying information that he'd have rather kept a little more quiet, all because the idiot didn't _believe _in privacy, or secrets, or whatever the hell stupid reasons he'd rattle off.

He sighed again and gave a mental shrug, dismissing the mild concern and minor annoyance and letting them simply slide off his brain as easily as water slides off a duck.

His brain gave a hiccup when he realized what had just passed through it, and he couldn't help but give a short chuckle at what he'd thought; 'water off a duck'. _Bird metaphors._ Ridiculous.

With another dry chuckle, he pushed off of his mattress and sat up. He winced slightly at the creaking protest of the joints and paused to rub some feeling back into his thigh before unfolding his long-limbed body and clambering to his feet. He yawned. The banging continued.

Favoring his right leg, he made his way to the rattling door. A smile ghosted its way across his lips and he shook his head; he curled his fingers around the doorknob and pulled.

And immediately twisted his body to one side to avoid getting a face full of several dirty, scarred knuckles.

His lips pulled up into something resembling a smile for just a moment before dropping, and he straightened back up to greet his guest properly.

"You're early," he said.

"Fuck you," Goubatsu Maemi replied, dropping her arm back to her side and glaring at him.

"Fair enough." He stepped back from the door to allow her entrance, and she practically stormed into his apartment, not-so-politely shouldering him aside and basically acting as if it was her goddamn right to be there, thank you very fucking much. She left muddy footprints on his wood-paneled floor as she walked, and with a muttered curse she went and sat on his dining room table, where she proceeded to take off her boots and clap them together; bits of dirt and mud cracked and broke off, littering his floor with even more filth. For his part, he just shook his head, closed his door, and said, "How charming."

"Fuck you twice," Goubatsu replied again.

"Fair enough," he said again.

When she seemed to have deemed her boots clean enough and relatively-free of larger pieces of earth, she chose to chuck them into the corner instead of putting them back on. The stench of sweat and the stink of foot slowly began to waft into the air. She either didn't notice (which was possible) or didn't care (which was more likely) about the offending odor, and she bore her teeth at the owner of the apartment and asked, "How was the mission?"

He shrugged, ignoring the dirt and the smell as best as he possibly could, and said, "Went okay. Didn't have to kill anyone this time." He started walking towards the table, taking care not to step near her footprints in case he contracted some freakish disease from them.

"What a shame."

"Had to sleep with an eighteen-year-old to rid her of some sort of terrible curse, though."

She grinned. "Nice." She scratched at her arm, and small flecks of dirt and god-knows-what-else drifted to the floor. "Those're some of my favorite missions."

He faltered slightly in his walk, and his hand dropped to his left leg and rested lightly against his thigh. He looked up at her and raised an eyebrow. "You get to bring virginal young women under ancient voodoo curses to several orgasms in order to clear them of said curses, too?"

"They usually insist that I shower first," she said with some amount of distaste, "but it doesn't really matter once I get them going. Rutty little things, they are."

"No more so than you, my dear."

"You're goddamn right about that," she said, letting out a chuckle that sounded largely similar to rubbing two pieces of low-grit sandpaper together. She tapped her knuckles against the table in an unseen beat and grinned at him. "On the subject of rutty little things, Su told me that you'd started _dating_ again."

He sighed heavily and practically collapsed into his dining room chair. He stretched, sighed again, and muttered, "What a bitch."

"Said your next date's in two days," Goubatsu prodded, he grin feral and predatory. "Seemed to think that you'd be meeting up in the forest, too – what'cha plannin' to do in _there_, lover boy? Fuck her, then kill her?"

"My relationships don't hold quite the same dynamics as yours, Maemi; there's a reason why _you_ were nicknamed 'the Mantis' and not me."

"Just because I fuck a few guys and they go and _die_ on their next mission out-"

"You really need to quit hanging out with Mitarashi," he deadpanned.

"-the only thing that proves is that I shouldn't have wasted a night with weak-ass pieces of shit like them in the first place-"

"You're enough of a psychotic bitch without adding her influence, too."

"-suppose it's possible that I fucked 'em so hard that their brains got all fucked-up-"

"You give your prowess in bed too much credit – unless you're talking about actual brain-damage, because then it's possible. You do tend to get a little rough-"

"Oh, like you would fucking _know_, you dickless cum-dumpster-"

"I visit the hospital every now and again," he interrupted, shrugging. "Did you know there're three rooms cordoned off on the fourth floor that're used specifically for you and Mitarashi's leftovers?"

"Why the flying _fuck_ should I _give_ a shit?"

"There's supposed to be two to a room, but from what the male nurse told me-"

"We have _male nurses?_ That's it, I have to go kill someone-"

"-I know exactly how you feel, and it took everything I had in me not to smash his head into the wall until he stopped moving – and he told me that there was one memorable occasion where they'd been forced to squeeze _seven_ into each of the rooms."

"That musta been after that mission to Suna; _fuck_, we were as randy as fucking _tigers_."

"Bitches in heat?"

"Oh, f_uck you."_

"Fair enough."

* * *

Naruto stood unmoving in the middle of the street.

This was not usually a smart thing to do no matter _what_ time it was, in _any _part of any major city, but it was an especially stupid thing to do at noon in the southern sector of the village; the southern sector was where most of the civilians lived, and most of them tended to leave their homes or jobs or cardboard boxes on the side of the street or whatever at around this time to go shopping for whatever weird things it was that civilians shopped for.

Despite the bumping and jostling and swearwords, Naruto didn't seem to take notice of the metaphorical river of people flowing around him. His brow was furrowed, his mouth was set in a thoughtful (and seemingly-painful) frown, and his arms were crossed in front of his chest in determined concentration.

His eyes were locked onto a building on the other side of the street, and he was trying to goad his brain into finding out why exactly it seemed so important to him.

He was staring at a smallish building – smallish, at least, when compared to the two buildings on either side of it – that bore a lavender paint-job. A large variety of plants – mostly flowers – was easily visible through the its wide windows, and he could see that they were all turned towards the sunlight that streamed through the glass. The lights were off, though, and the shop was dark; it was empty; it was closed for the day.

It was the Yamanaka's flower shop.

Naruto stared at it. He knew it was something – that there was something about it, or about the Yamanaka family, that he wanted to know, or ask, or something, but he just…well, he just couldn't remember _what it was._ He knew it wasn't to buy something; even if he _did_ like growing things, it didn't mean he was into _flowers_ – he was a _man_, dammit, and men don't mosey about, taking care of _flowers_. Men took care of things like rabid dogs, vicious man-eating plants, and various types of carnivorous lizards. They ate things like beef jerky, and solved all of their problems with _explosives_. Yes. Manly. Grr.

He blinked.

When another ten minutes had passed with no particular shocks of realization, he gave up. Whatever. He sent the flower shop a parting look of deep disapproval and turned away and willingly began moving with the tide of people.

Of course, the mind never really works the way people want it to, so it was when he stopped actively thinking about it that his mind went and remembered it.

The particular shock of realization made him stop cold, and caused a very old woman to run straight into him. Unperturbed by this, or by the variety of curses the crone was throwing at him, his mind raced and processed and caught up with itself, and before anyone else realized it, he was running across the rooftops.

He had some people to talk to.

* * *

Yamanaka Ino, if ever asked about how she felt about life, the universe, and everything (which she never was, except occasionally by her parents and her over-enthusiastic godfather), would state with some conviction that she was fairly content with it all; why, she was even happy some of the time. She would go on to say that she was proud of herself most of the time, and that she was kind of nervous a lot of that time, too. After all, she'd managed to become a genin shinobi, finally – something she'd been wanting since she was four, since her father had started entertaining her with chakra instead of toys, and had told her stories through a mind-connection jutsu instead of out loud. She couldn't wait until they were done with those stupid D-rank missions, and was practically vibrating from the thought of going on a C-rank, outside the walls of the village she'd spent her entire life in.

She was a little disappointed that she hadn't gotten on a team with the Last Uchiha, but as much as that hurt, she was starting to get over it. After all, it could have been a lot worse than what she'd been given – she could've been on a team with Shino and Naruto, or something; insects and idiocy, she'd have gone mad. Instead, she managed to fall onto the same type of grouping her father had been given, the tried-tested-proven Shika-Ino-Cho trifecta. And while neither one of them were a Sasuke, they were also two people she'd known for her entire life; and despite how annoying they could be, that sort of thing served as an enormous comfort for both the present and anything she might have to deal with in the future.

Depending on how she was feeling on a day-to-day basis, she either loved – well, not _loved, _as that was something reserved for her family and for Sasuke-kun – or hated her teammates. Especially Shikamaru.

She scowled down at the food on her plate.

It wasn't that he was a bad person, per say – he _did_ try to do the right thing, and he did have a vague sense of ethics and honor that his father had given him, and it was almost nice to see how good a friend he was to Chouji – but there were just so many things about him that got on her nerves, his absolute laziness hitting the top of that rather lengthy list. There was the way he talked, in that slow sort of drawl, and the way that he moved, the way he did his hair, the way he chewed his food, that perma-scowl he always wore, the fact that he just didn't want to _try_ to get better, whether in training or as a person or as a _boy_ or _anything._

She took an annoyed/angry bite of her lunch and chewed it in an annoyed/angry fashion.

What was she thinking about before she'd gone on an inner-monologue-ing rant about Shikamaru? Oh, that's right – how good of a person he and Chouji were. Sometimes.

Chouji was a lot better, lot less annoying. Had a bit of an obsession with food, but that was understandable when his family's clan jutsu were factored into the equation. He was always in a good mood, and had the impressive gift of making her laugh, at least when he wasn't running around with-

The front door clattered open.

She glared.

The recipient of the glare seemed to take this as an invitation, and proceeded to walk into her home with nary a word, quietly drawing the door closed behind him. A normal person might have felt awkward, out of place, maybe, when standing inside someone else's house while that someone else tried to blow them up with their eyes, but the intruder was as relaxed as ever and stood as if it was his god-given-right to stand right there.

He raised an eyebrow in reply to her glaring and his frown deepened slightly.

"Nara," Ino growled, one hand clenching the table harder than completely necessary, "haven't you _ever_ heard of _knocking?"_

Shikamaru's eyebrow arched just a little bit higher and he said, quite plainly, "I've never knocked before." He glanced over his shoulder at the door and added, "Not really an intelligent thing to do when you've got an old-styled paper-screen door instead of the modern model with the hinges and the doorknob and the two inches of solid wood; I'd end up punching a hole in the thing if I knocked." His frown turned contemplative. "Although maybe your parents would wise up and get an _actual_ door if I did that…" He looked back at the door thoughtfully and his lips quirked upwards.

"Don't you _dare_," Ino hissed, rising from the table and stalking over to him.

He glanced at her, and after a long-suffering sigh, said, "Fine." Then he walked around her and settled himself into her vacated seat, eyeing the remains of her lunch with interest. Ino scowled and grabbed her plate.

"_What_," she demanded, "are you _doing _here?"

"Well, I'm _not_ here to exchange scathing insults with you," Shikamaru said wearily, as if he'd just walked a thousand kilometers to reach her house and wished for little else beside rest, "no matter how constructive or educational or positively troublesome the activity may be."

"Nara-"

"I would like to speak with your father," he interrupted, cutting off her next threat of bodily harm and causing a stupefied expression to plant itself on her face, "or with your grandmother if she's available."

Ino blinked once, then twice, before her features rearranged themselves; she frowned slightly and narrowed her eyes. She shifted into a more challenging pose, with her hand on her hip, and asked, "And what exactly do you want to talk to _them_ for?"

Shikamaru looked at her for a very, very long moment; then he sighed long and hard and shook his head.

He seemed to do those sorts of things a lot around Ino.

Well, it was better than _liking _her, or something equally repulsive and insane. He didn't really feel up to committing himself into the Psych Ward at Konoha General, and besides, then he'd have to explain why he wanted to self-commit, and there'd be long, pointless conversations and mounds of paperwork and too many troublesome people poking him and prodding him with questions and needles and everything else – it was just too much of a headache, even if it may be good for him in the longer run.

If there was one thing that was nearly always present when Yamanaka Ino was around, it was the general feeling of annoyance. At the moment, it had bypassed 'general' annoyance and bloomed into 'specific' annoyance. Her retorts and suspicions weren't doing anything to help him, and in fact were doing little else than add to the truly troublesome headache he'd had since he'd woken up.

Shikamaru did not like headaches. He'd had a few, and they didn't really get along. He'd tried reasoning with them, but as it turns out, headaches don't listen to pleas and bargaining, which was a shame; he was allergic to the aspirin medicine that was usually taken for headaches, which sucked, and he was one of those people who refused to have healing chakra used on him; he wouldn't take such an easy-out; it wasn't good to depend on chakra for every little thing. If he got a cut or a broken bone, he'd disinfect it himself and wrap it, or get the bone set by his mother and wait until it healed properly. If he made mistakes, got injured, he'd deal with the consequences of a lengthy and inconvenient healing – because that's how people _learned_, from the result of their errors. That's how people got _better_.

While he wasn't all that jazzed about getting 'better' – as being better meant shouldering more responsibility, and other such troublesome things – Shikamaru wasn't someone who turned down learning a lesson.

Unfortunately, one lesson he'd never learned was how to deal with an irate Ino. It wasn't entirely his fault, as Ino was one of those people who was pretty much always irate; it was her baseline, and through much trial and error, he'd found that it was quite difficult to move someone from where they started off. His only 100-percent successful finishing move was walking away, which, while it was something he would normally do, he could not do so at this juncture; he had important things to do, things that actually, for once, _mattered_ to him, and he couldn't very well just walk away from it because of an exasperatingly-emotional blonde.

The only other things that got through an irate Ino were distractions – such as pointing out a sale, or saying how you've discovered a new species of flower, or that Sakura said she was ugly – or unexpected events that emotionally-overloaded her less-than-amicable brain – such as a random Sasuke-sighting, or stripping down naked, or stripping Sasuke naked (not that he'd ever done those last two, but he was quite certain they'd work).

He wasn't really one to use the distraction-method, because that seemed, to him, like such a low thing to do. He went with the emotional-overload, mostly because he had a large stockpile of fairly shocking things to whip out at a moment's notice; it wasn't that he was an active gossiper, but he did overhear a _lot_ if he concentrated a little, and his enormous genius-brain couldn't help but take all that inane chatter, process it, and file it under the correct designation.

Being a genius…it was a gift, and a curse.

More times than not, it was his curse.

And that was why he was here.

"I want to ask them whether or not it would be possible for them to transfer my intellect to someone else who would actually _do_ something with it."

There. That should get her to back off a little bit. The most shocking thing is almost always the truth.

Feeling a little satisfied and a little vindicated, Shikamaru took his focus off of the blonde banshee and looked around. The dining room hadn't changed much since he'd last been here, nor had the connecting entranceway. There was a new photo on a table against the wall, a new painting above the sink, a few odds and ends moved around on the kitchen counter. Nothing huge – but, then, he hadn't expected anything huge. The Yamanaka family didn't change much; their front door proved that point just fine.

After two full minutes of idly examining the room, he heard Ino make a noise – he didn't quite turn back towards her, but, then, he didn't need to. She was loud enough without having both ears directed at her. She made the noise again, and he frowned.

Then it occurred a third time, and Shikamaru decided that he really should have been expecting her reaction when the noise erupted into haughty, holier-than-thou laughter, and she asked between breaths, _"What _intellect?"

He couldn't help it, and his frown promptly dropped into a disapproving scowl.

The good news was that this was not the only disapproving expression in the room.

"_Ino."_

Ino jumped with a squeak and turned red; Shikamaru flopped his head backwards and saw an upside-down Yamanaka Inoichi looking in his daughter's direction with a frown set firmly on his face.

Shikamaru felt a little better at that, and he said "hey" in greeting.

Inoichi nodded back at him before looking back to his daughter and raising an eyebrow. Her squirming and stammering only succeeded in lifting Shikamaru's mood even more; he almost smiled.

When no excuse, or even intelligible response, was given, Inoichi shook his head. He looked over at Shikamaru again and said, "Ino, dear – could you excuse us for a while?"

Shamefaced, she gave her teammate one last, fleeting look before leaving the room.

"No eating in your bedroom!"

She came back into the room, set her plate of food on the counter, and left again.

Inoichi looked at his friend's son critically. "You were saying that you wanted me for something?" The boy looked relaxed, and relieved.

Shikamaru nodded, keeping his eyes locked onto the elder Yamanaka's to convey the seriousness of his request. "I'll be clear with you, Yamanaka-san."

"Good way to start."

A smirk passed over his lips, and he continued, "I'm intelligent. Despite what other people, including your daughter, may be willing to believe, I have an IQ of over 200."

Inoichi chuckled at that. "Like father, like son, huh?"

"A little too much, in this case," Shikamaru conceded, "although he was always a little more up-front and active with his. I, frankly, would be much more comfortable if I didn't have to live like my father – or worse." He drummed his fingers lightly on the table; he swallowed, and wet his lips with his tongue. "I'm _too_ intelligent, Yamanaka-san."

Blue eyes lost their mirth and regarded him seriously. "You are asking if my clan can…dumb you down?"

"Essentially correct, but not complete." He thought for a moment, hand rubbing along his jaw line, before he continued slowly, "Intelligence such as I bear is an immeasurable gift, and given to me is a wasted effort and a useless gesture." Smirking again, he added, "and an _enormous_ pain in the ass." His lips dropped back to a frown. "To me, it's a bane; to another, to the right person, it would be the thing that it was meant to be."

Inoichi studied the younger male carefully. "You don't believe that you were meant to have it? You don't believe that the gods gave it to you for a reason?"

The frown dropped to a scowl and his arms settled in front of his chest. "The gods made a manufacturing error," he muttered spitefully.

Inoichi sighed, shook his head, and steered them back to the subject at hand. "You want to transfer your intelligence to someone else," he said – not a question, but a statement of fact.

"If at all possible," Shikamaru said shortly. He glared at the table.

"And if not?"

The glare intensified, then broke; he let out a long sigh that seemed to use every modicum of air in his lungs, and he seemed to collapse inwards on himself, giving up. "Then I'll have to grin and bear it." He looked up and scowled again at the surprised look in the Yamanaka's eyes. "What?" he said, sharper than he'd meant to. "I already told you this was a gift not to be wasted. If we can't switch it, then I'm not just going to let it disappear." He shook his head. "If we can't switch it, then, and _only _then, will I use it."

Inoichi nodded once more, and began to turn away. He paused, and said, "My mother knows a great deal more about the family jutsu, and how they work, than I do. She'll be able to explain the process to your satisfaction." Shikamaru gave some vague acknowledgement, and watched as the blond jounin exited the dining room.

Blinking tiredly – who knew talking with such authority to a fairly-big-deal-jounin could be so exhausting? Even if said jounin was a buddy of your father? – he pushed his chair away from the table, angling himself so that the chair rose up on its two back legs. He kept one foot up against the table for balance, and he shut his eyes.

His hands came together.

He had thought long and hard about this decision for the past week, and he had found no other acceptable possibility; he did not want this intelligence, he did not need this intelligence, and truth be told he'd rather be a common civilian than a genius shinobi any day of the week.

There were only a few questions left: the first was whether or not the Yamanaka elders would even concede his request; the second, and more distressing, was who could he possibly loan his IQ to? He didn't want to give genius-level intellect to a genius – what goddamned sense would _that _make? – but he also didn't want to give it to some brain-damaged schmuck who couldn't utilize it correctly; he wanted his intelligence to _matter_ to someone, and be given to someone who could _use_ it to accomplish their goals, whatever they may be – someone who wanted to master Sealing, or someone who wanted to be the most renowned tactical mind in Fire Country. Someone with _ambition_, someone who could do good for Konohagakure. Someone who wanted to rise to the higher echelons of society and do great things from the positions of power: ANBU Captain, or world-famous jounin; the next Sannin, the next policing power, the next -

_Shrrk!_

The noise – tearing of paper, it sounded like – roused him from his deep focus and brought him back into reality. His hands snapped apart as if repelled by each other and he opened his eyes, allowing chair to fall back onto all four legs with a _thump._

There was what appeared to be a fist sticking through the front door – the old-styled paper-screen front door.

He blinked once, tired and surprised, and his lips quirked up ever so slightly.

There was a muttered curse word and the hand retracted, and a shaft of sunlight shone through the appropriately fist-sized hole. He heard something that sounded suspiciously like "there's no stupid doorknob" before the door slid open with a loud clatter. It slammed into its frame with an even louder clatter, and a sheepish-annoyed Uzumaki Naruto was exposed to see for an audience of one.

The audience gave a lazy wave. "Hey, Naruto."

Naruto's shadowed face expressed surprise and confusion, and he was quick to ask, "What're you doing here?" His posture straightened, and his head did several quick directional snaps as he looked around – causing a very bird-like effect – in further confusion. He regarded Shikamaru suspiciously and ventured, "Is this the Yamanaka house or did I take a totally wrong turn somewhere?"

"Nah," Shikamaru drawled, "you've got the right place."

The suspicious look didn't let up. "So what're _you_ doing here, then?"

Yawn. "I'm having a chat with Ino's folks."

"About?"

"That's not exactly your business, now, is it?" Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. "Why are _you_ here?"

"To talk to Ino's father."

Shikamaru grinned slightly, recognizing the evasive parroting. "About?"

"That's not exactly your business, now, is it?" Naruto asked, grinning back; his hand slid into his pants pocket.

"Come on in – no one'll mind too much, except for Ino. Banshee," he added with a mutter. Naruto hesitated briefly, then shrugged and stepped into the house, closing the door quietly behind him. He grabbed a chair from the corner of the room and sat near Shikamaru, his back to the table.

"She _is_ loud, isn't she?" the blonde agreed, bobbing his head knowledgably.

"_Hey."_ Both boys looked down the adjoining hallway. "That's _my_ daughter you're calling loud," Inoichi admonished as he came down the hall.

Naruto had the good grace to look embarrassed. Shikamaru rolled his eyes.

"I saw that."

Naruto snickered. Shikamaru frowned and told him to shut up.

"Is Naruto here with you, Shikamaru?" Inoichi asked as he came into the room.

"Nope."

Seeing Shikamaru's distinct lack of an explanation, Naruto jumped to his own defense. "I had something I wanted to talk to you about," he said quickly, shooting the elder man a nervous grin.

"Well, aren't we popular today," the elder man in question quipped with a grin of his own. "What did you need?"

"I-"

"-will shut your trap, boy, and will wait your turn until we are finished with the little Nara."

There was a length of silence, and when it just kept stretching on, Inoichi gave a sheepish sort of smile. Shikamaru flushed a light pink and scowled, and Naruto just looked around, confused. That voice had most certainly _not_ been from anyone in the room – chiefly, because none of the three people in the room were women, let alone what had sounded like a very old and crusty woman. On the other hand, it _had_ seemed to come from Inoichi, even though he hadn't moved his mouth, and –

'_Oh'_, went Naruto's brain, when a smallish figure stepped out from behind Inoichi and into plain view. Then his mouth spat out what his brain was spitting and he said, "Well, that makes a lot more sense."

The person that had been behind Inoichi was, as stated before, smallish, and also, as Naruto suspected, an old and crusty woman. Based on the long white-blonde hair she sported, he could only (correctly) assume that she was part of the Yamanaka family, and also (correctly) assumed that she was Inoichi's mother. She wore a loose, tattered robe that looked like it'd been with her for the entire impressive span of her ridiculously-long life. Her fingers were long, spindly, and the individual veins along her hand and arm were easily distinguishable against the thin, pale, papery flesh; she kept one hand against the wall. Her mouth was set into a disapproving scowl, and her eyes were a milky white.

That last bit was the thing that had Naruto stumped. Sure, it wasn't like he hadn't seen weird-ass eyes before – he lived in _Konoha _for god's sakes, and they had the Hyuuga's all-white all-seeing eyes, and he could recall the Uchiha's totally-cheating red-spinny eyes from when he was little – and it wasn't like the Yamanaka really had normal, run-of-the-mill eyes anyhow, what with their pretty damn near lack of any pupils at _all_ (he was pretty sure they had no souls), but even if they didn't have any black parts, they _did _at least have white parts, and little blue-colored parts.

Hers weren't white and blue, just a plain, strange-looking distortion, like looking through a botched piece of smoked glass. And he had the strangest feeling that she was glaring at him, even though her eyes weren't quite looking at him.

He was very confused.

So his mouth spat out what his brain was spitting and he asked, "What the hell's wrong with your eyes?"

Inoichi visibly winced.

Her scowl deepened, emphasizing the lines on her face, and Naruto was suddenly quite certain that she wanted to smack him 'round the house and give him a very stern and possibly-abusive lecture about respect, tact, and all those other things he never bothered learning.

Shikamaru kicked him in the shin. After Naruto let out half of a curse, the crone allowed a small smile towards the Nara and said, "At least this one has some modicum of manners." Shikamaru looked at her plainly, frowning slightly. She turned to Naruto slightly and said, "I'm blind, boy, but that's got nothing to do with either of your visiting, so let's skip straight to that, shall we?"

"Mother, Shikamaru-san-" Inoichi started, but was easily cut off by the woman in question.

"-I could hear the entire exchange from upstairs, dear, and you really should learn to _use_ those privacy seals that I had installed throughout the house if you need to speak of something _private_."

"Yes, mother."

"Now, as you stated before, I would be better at explaining the process to our little Nara here-" and Shikamaru scowled in distaste and flushed pink at the demeaning term "-so I shall do that while you take care of the louder one."

Inoichi nodded once, and sent a grin down at an indignant Naruto.

"Nara!" she barked. Shikamaru jumped a little bit in his chair, and shot her a wounded sort of glare. "Come." And she exited the room, heavily favoring her left leg and keeping one hand on the wall as she walked. Shikamaru turned his glare onto Naruto, who was laughing silently, before sighing and heaving himself out of his seat. He took long, slow steps as he went into the hallway to follow her. "And hurry up! I won't tolerate any dilly-dallying!" He scowled, shot one last glare at Naruto, who could hardly contain his mirth, and slouched out of sight.

Inoichi picked up Shikamaru's chair and moved it to the other side of the table, where he sat down; he folded his hands on the table and set his eyes on Naruto and his shaking shoulders. He patiently waited until the boy's laughter subsided before clearing his throat for attention. Naruto spun around in his chair and pushed himself upwards, trying to sit up straight as well but finding it quite disagreeable with his spine. So he slumped a little bit, braced his hands against the seat of his own chair, and looked back at the male Yamanaka.

"Hey, Yamanaka-san," he said, grinning.

"Naruto-kun," the elder blonde replied with a slight incline of his head. "You had something to talk about?"

"Yeah." His put a hand into his pocket and withdrew the Shinobi's Scroll from its depths and gently placed it onto the table in front of him. Inoichi glanced down at it and quirked an eyebrow, prompting an explanation. Naruto's grin shrunk and turned nervous, and he took two calming breaths, and he began to explain.

* * *

Ino scowled and in half-hearted anger, kicked her chair. It toppled over and hit the carpeted floor with a somewhat-satisfying _thump._ Immediately after, she realized that such action didn't change her present situation whatsoever, and her scowl returned with a vengeance.

She was confined to her room.

She kicked the tipped-over chair again, just for the feeling of kicking something that didn't usually kick back.

She was confined to her _freaking_ room, like she was a freaking _five year old._

The scowl deepened, and she let off another kick.

_Why?_ Why in the hell, _what_ in the hell was so important that she couldn't be allowed to listen? Shikamaru was her _teammate_, for kami's sake; if it concerned him, then it (to some extent) concerned her. And if it had to be a secret or something, she could lie for it or die for it or _whatever _just as easily as the next kunoichi.

She gave the chair a reprieve, instead choosing to collapse onto her large, fluffy, _purple_ bed. She blew an errant strand of blonde hair out of her face and crossed her arms, letting out an irritated huff. The scowl slowly smoothed out and became thoughtful.

Lying – now there was a thought. What if Shika had been telling her the truth, for once in his miserable life? What if he really was intelligent enough and, true to Shikamaru form, deemed it too much trouble to deal with? It _could_ almost make sense if it were true – except then she would have to be able to struggle past the enormous plausibility roadblock that was Shika being some kind of hidden genius, and that was one thing her brain was incapable of without completely destroying itself in the process.

After all, if he actually had some smarts behind that enormous forehead of his – he put Sakura to shame with that thing – then Ino would have noticed it before. Right?

The sound of a door opening broke her from her thoughts, and she sent a reactionary glare at her doorway only to find it empty and her door still firmly shut. She blinked precisely one time before her brain caught up and, as she heard the sound of a door snapping shut, she realized that the sounds were coming from the next room over. She looked skeptically at the wall next to her – it couldn't be _that_ thin, she'd have noticed it before, wouldn't she've? – listening quietly to two pairs of equally-shuffling feet moving around the room; one of them stopped, and a low, long creak was heard, and a soft sigh.

Ino frowned. The room next door was a spare bedroom, tentatively reserved for Nara Shikaku – Shikamaru's father – when his wife kicked him out for whatever he'd done to piss her off that week. There was a bed in there, a closet, a desk. A window. Chair. Floor. Mirror.

She assumed that of the two that were in there – and she had a very shrewd idea who those two happened to be – one of them had taken a seat in the only chair in the room.

She scooted closer to the wall, wincing at the _twangs _that her spring-supported bedspread let out as she moved about. She pressed one of her ears against the wall and ever-so-slightly furrowed her brow in thought and concentration.

The two people in the next room began to speak. Ino listened attentively.

* * *

Hello, all - I have returned from my near-seven-month-long-haitus-due-to-militarial-requirements. Now hit the review button and tell me you missed me.

This chapter is borne of two seperate side-comments; first, in the first few chapters, where Naruto contemplates showing the Shinobi's Scroll to Ino's family, to see if they've got anything to say about it. Second is in chapter six, when Shikamaru's hanging out at the Hokage Memorial place and thinking 'bout stuff, and he idly thinks about talking to the Yamanaka about throwing his IQ in somone else's direction.

Since I had to people thinking of going to the same people about somewhat-personal problems, I naturally had to have them go to the same people at the same time, for maximum plot/character interaction and maximum humor.

That's all I've got for now - I'll be back with the rest of this bi-atch before you know it!

~ 30CK / troutpeoples


	13. Chapter 12 part 2

The Marauders _ a Naruto fanfiction by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

Chapter 12 (part 2)

* * *

While Uzumaki Naruto was giving one Yamanaka the run-down of a scroll, another Yamanaka was giving Nara Shikamaru a blinding headache; and while it was the same headache he'd had since he'd walked into their home, it was a different Yamanaka that was now furthering its painful influence.

He squeezed his eyes shut as a lancing pain hit him just behind his left temple.

Well, to be fair (and specific), it wasn't the Yamanaka alone that was helping him along the path of troublesome physical ailments; it was actually a variety of things, including things like the other occupants of the house, the problem at hand, the Shadows that stretched across the room, and especially the things he could Hear. It's just that the Yamanaka was the largest and most obvious presence on the list, and garnered the majority of his limited attention; therefore, she justly received the majority of the blame as well.

He gave the old woman a tired glare.

He didn't quite understand how she knew that he was glaring at her, but he had quickly come around to understanding that _when_ he glared, she smacked him soundly across the side of his head. This fact, however, didn't stop him from glaring at her – really, he received harsher treatment from his mother for slouching when he walked – and thus he kept doing so whenever he felt the need to do so.

As expected, her hand snapped out like a cobra and whacked him across the side of the head, and he let out an annoyed and mildly-pained grunt as he instinctively let his head travel with the blow; his head bounced back from one side to the other before settling at an angle to the right. He didn't bother straightening it, instead choosing to just let his head essentially lie against his shoulder. It wasn't a very comfortable position, but he could deal with it. He was quite used to the discomfort that life tended to throw his way.

It wasn't that she was an annoying person that was causing him to glare at her so frequently; it was more along the lines of her not really knowing how to _simplify_ the shit she was telling him into something, well, simpler. Just because he _could_ follow what she was talking about in exhaustive detail didn't mean he _wanted_ to follow the overflow of information to its end. He was almost sorry he'd even come to the Yamanaka's residence, and if the goal he was attempting to attain wasn't so important to him, he would've left ten minutes ago when she'd first started talking.

Even though she claimed that she'd heard his conversation with Inoichi in its entirety before her initial appearance, she had bullied him into telling her everything all over again. So, he had sighed heavily – in defeat, in hopelessness, in resignation, in exhaustion – and repeated himself.

Shikamaru_ hated _repeating himself.

He told her that he had an IQ well over 200. He told her that he wanted no part of it, and would really rather it be given to someone else who would actually use it, and use it well. He told her that, to him, it represented extra responsibility, extra work, extra thought and extra admiration and attention and _headaches_ – things he didn't want in the slightest; things he needed even less. He told her that he wanted to gift an ambitious member of the community, preferably within his age group, plus or minus one or two years, with what shouldn't have been his in the first place. It wasn't technically second-hand because he had never really used it in the first place; as far as he was concerned, his intellect was still whole, shiny, and brand-spankin'-new. Anyone to receive it would be truly blessed, and he would be wishing them the best.

After he had finished his little speech – which was significantly/depressingly longer than his regular two-sentence limit – the elder Yamanaka had begun a little speech of her own.

It started off with her name. All in all, it was a good place to start, especially since Shikamaru honestly had no clue what her name was; he'd just known of her as 'Gram', 'Inoichi's mother', or 'crotchety old bat'; now he knew of her as Yamanaka Nyoko, even if he couldn't call her that, as she had firmly stated that he was not to address her in such an informal manner. Personally, he was going to stick with 'crotchety old bat'.

She explained that her father (through marriage), Ino's great-grandfather, was the one who had led the Yamanaka clan into their niche in Konoha; very interested in the mind and how it worked, he was, and his work as one of the first and best medic-nin gave him an intimate look at how chakra worked and acted on and inside the human body. It was on the nearly-dead that he began his tests, his experimentation; he had long since discovered that pulses of chakra into specific points of the body, not limited to tenketsu, could cause a muscular reaction to specific parts of the body. He thought that the same thing could be done with the brain; pulses of chakra, much like the electronic pulses of the nervous system, could cause similar reactions to not only the same parts of the body, but also to their thoughts, to their emotions, to their conditioned responses. Specific, channeled chakra into the brain could, perhaps, completely change a person – be it for better or for worse, he was not overly concerned about.

When he reached the boundaries of the physical, he jumped to the opposite side of the spectrum; he began work on the insubstantial. The mind. The spirit. Things that couldn't be held or touched, but could be affected by chakra every bit as much as the corporeal body could be.

He gained a valuable ally during his research by the name of Morino Kouryou. When all was said and done, when they had found out as much as they could, when they and their 'inhumane' testing was exposed for all the masses to see, they both had had children born, and both had taught them much of what they knew. Yamanaka Nyoko was a natural, practically a sponge for his ideas, theories, and results; he taught her everything he could within the limited time they had together, and made sure to forbid her from some of the nastier stuff he'd done and found out. Morino Kouryou, when teaching his son, had no such qualms about crossing the lines of morality, and shared with his son all the deepest, darkest methods they'd used, all the information-extracting, all the essential mind-altering techniques.

That next generation of Yamanaka was mostly innocent, with knowledge of mind-walking and invasion, and tuned to the psyche and the spirits. That next generation of Morino, and the one following it, was dark and twisted, and quickly became known for unmerciful and masterful torture techniques above all else.

Now, so many years later, Yamanaka Nyoko had learned things that even her father never got to, that her father couldn't have even dreamed of in his time. Morino Ibiki could honestly profess the exact same claim, to the delight of a few and the disgust of many.

When the history lesson was _finally_ over, she moved onto the heart of the matter. The only problem was that, apparently, the 'heart' of the matter was one of the most complex things anyone had ever seen or heard of, and contained far too many large words, side-addendums, and lengthy elaborations than Shikamaru was really comfortable with.

His headache persisted.

Everyone had their own mindscape, the elder Yamanaka had explained. Its exact nature – its general appearance, its dimensions, the areas that correlate to memory or emotion, everything – varied from person to person, and was directly correlated between the experiences each person had had throughout their lifetime. Their mind was built upon their life, and how it was shaped was influenced by what they thought, how they thought, by the way they thought, both consciously and unconsciously.

It was a simple thing for a Yamanaka to erase memory. It was a simple thing for them to play with emotions. It was a simple thing for them to control motor function. All it took was the right use of chakra in the right place, which the Yamanaka were exceedingly well-trained at, and those kinds of things were child's play.

Reducing someone to a pile of useless flesh by completely wiping their mind? A little harder, but still well within their talents. Its drawback was that the process took a fairly long amount of time, mostly due to the large concentration of chakra that had to be gathered.

Forcing someone's spirit outside their body after taking control? Devilishly difficult; a soul outright refused to be separated from their host-body, and the only reason the Yamanaka could do it with such ease was because they had a number of very important chakra points severed, and parts of their brains were altered ever-so-slightly when they were born through the use of large but precise amounts of chakra. It had caused their souls, their spirits, their _being_ to be out of balance; loose; unrestricted. The consequences of such a thing included faster deaths when mortally wounded, included a harder hit from dark or demonic chakra (such as that of, say, a 200 meter tall evil mammalian with a gratuitous amount of tails), included a closer interaction with the deceased and passed-on, from seeing through the eyes of the dead to actually _seeing_ the dead.

Transferring memory from one person to another? Easier than one would think.

But transferring _intellect_ from one person to another? That was a whole different kind of procedure.

The problem lay in the inherent difference between intellect and memory. Things like memory, things like emotions, were things easily manipulated; they were controlled by particular portions of the brain, and those portions could be touched, altered, in order to provide a specific type of response. Electrical stimulation to one part of the brain causes sadness, another causes anger; stimulation to a different section blocks or erases memory. Chakra pulses acted under the same principals as electrical charges, and held the same power; could be used effectively in making a person experience what you wished for them to experience.

Intellect, however, was far less concrete, and far more difficult to handle.

Emotions were understood. The chemical reactions that a person underwent when stressed, or when sad, or frustrated, or what have you, had been researched. Documented. Not all of it is for sure, not all of it is one hundred percent, but it is a field that has answers. Memory, while a little more difficult, was similarly understood; amnesia was an understood concept, and how the mind stored and sloughed off memories was detailed in several books already, largely due in part to the work of the Yamanaka family, as a matter of fact.

But intellect?

No.

It just didn't make sense. Sometimes, intellect seemed hereditary – all you had to do was look at the last few generations of the Nara clan to see the evidence of that theory – and sometimes it seemed completely random; genii could be born to the biggest idiots in the world, and two genii could produce mentally-deficient child. There did not seem to be any logical correlation between the parent's IQ levels and their children's IQ levels. There was no definite or confirmed area of the mind that harbored a person's intellect.

So was it impossible?

No; it involved a lot more interaction with both parties' mindscapes than was strictly condoned, and risked turning both parties into brain-dead invalids or sending them straight into very lengthy comas. It was a difficult task, and was not advised due to the level of difficulty; it was definitely not safe, and had only been attempted six times before – two of them succeeded. The…leftovers…of three of the attempts were in the long-term ward in Konoha General. The results of the last one had been mercifully ended, and given a plot in the local cemetery; she confessed that she still visited them once a year to apologize for what she'd done to them.

It was difficult.

It was dangerous.

And he had to be _one hundred percent sure_ that it was what he _truly_ wanted to do before she would even _consider_ attempting it.

She relaxed into her chair and gazed unseeingly at the little Nara, who had not moved from his seat on the beat-up bed since she'd begun speaking.

Shikamaru, for his part, was thinking. Normally, this would include a particular positioning of his hands, a meditative stance that essentially allowed for him to completely calm his body and mind in order to aid in the thought process; however, due to a certain stubborn headache, both hands were busy being clamped on either side of his head. His palms were pressed against his temples, and he was slowly rotating them in long, slow circles in an attempt to stave off the pain.

It wasn't working.

Of course, he didn't really expect it to work in the first place, but it made him feel a little better in that he was actually trying to do something to help instead of just curling into a ball and crying, which is pretty much what he felt like doing, un-masculine though it may have been.

It was hard _not _to get a headache when you're hearing two completely different conversations at once, and _especially_ when your brain is so _stupidly_ fantastical that it can actively follow, process, and comprehend the majority of both of those conversations at once, and put hard thought into both all at the same time.

On one hand, he had the conversation – not so much of a conversation, though, as much as it was a lecture, which he _hated_ – between himself and Yamanaka Nyoko. It was very important to him, mostly because it involved himself to a very personal degree, and the influx of information required a great deal of his attention and focus.

On the other hand, he had the conversation between Uzumaki Naruto and Yamanaka Inoichi.

Shikamaru yawned widely and let it taper off into a deep sigh. He cracked an eye open and stared downwards at the floor. A dustbunny skittered across the wooden paneling, catching the sunlight from the open window behind him for just a moment before getting blown under the bed.

He stared at his shadow.

He opened part of his mind – and he _dove –_ and voices flared up within his ears – his chakra churned within his chest – the smell of lavender –

– and he closed his eyes; he pushed his palms into his temples and grunted at the pain. The voices faded, trickled off into whispers. Sometimes loud, sometimes quiet, always just within his ear, reverberating inside his skull and tickling at his consciousness like the whine of an in-flight insect.

He didn't know why this happened. His dad certainly never experienced anything like it, and he was fairly certain that his grandfather hadn't either before he'd died.

Perhaps it was an evolution, of sorts – the constant use of some-and-such jutsu changes something in the body, something in the mind, that change is passed to the offspring where it is mutated and adapted into a new sort-of offshoot from the original jutsu; a greater sensitivity to the results of that jutsu, greater skill in wielding it, more stamina when using it, and so on. It wasn't a terribly-uncommon occurrence. After all, it's not like the Aburame had _always_ had bugs in their bodies, nor had the Hyuuga always possessed such skill at sensing and controlling chakra. Those things took time to build up, took time to pass down through the generations and grow into something new and _evolve_.

It had only started up a few years ago – little whispers on the edge of his mind, conversations he could never recall actually hearing that would stick in his mind, personal, private conversations that gave him information that he'd rather not have know about the persons in question. It took him a while to figure out what was going on.

He could hear…_through_ shadows.

Granted, it was a very limited ability – especially given the fact that he really had no desire to expand its abilities, because it was troublesome enough already, and he didn't _want_ more skill at listening in on other people's conversations; he wasn't a bloody eavesdropper, for fuck's sake.

But, as previously stated, his brain was something that didn't always give him a choice when it came to hearing those through-the-shadows-conversations; as much as he tried to ignore what he heard, his brain kept a constant hold on it, and made sure to follow the sounds to the bitter end, following and absorbing the information presented like some nosy, ill-begotten sponge. It wasn't always clear, and it wasn't always complete, but it was always _there_.

The conversation between Naruto and Inoichi, it seemed, required every bit as much of his focus as his ongoing conversation with Yamanaka Nyoko had – for the last twenty minutes, he'd felt like he'd been _stretched_, pulled two different directions before being let go simultaneously to fall into a boneless heap. Now, he was just _tired_. Both conversation were done, finished, and his mind couldn't stop twirling and whirring and processing all that information that he'd unwillingly absorbed. He wanted to go somewhere comfortable – hell, it didn't even _have_ to be comfortable, he could just as well pass out on the floor – and sleep for a good thirty hours. His brain seemed to be the thing that had other plans.

The dual-concentration was the real reason for his persistent headache; the mind can only take so much of a beating before it starts beating back, no matter how capable the mind may be or how much of a beating it could _still_ take.

Shikamaru winced as a sharp bolt of pain shot across his head. He allowed himself to flop down onto the bed; he grabbed the musty old pillow that lay at the head of the bed and pressed it to his face, blocking out the light, and he thought.

He thought about Naruto, mostly, and the boy's little chat with Inoichi downstairs. He hadn't been able to hear all of it – and even his subconscious failed to pick up on a lot of what had been said – but what he had managed to catch had been…

…hmm.

That is to say, it _may_ have been interesting, fascinating even, if he'd heard it in its entirety – but it had been fragmented, and there were large gaps of conversation that he could hardly begin to speculate about for fear of coming to an incorrect conclusion or false assumption.

He'd heard Naruto weave together a story of the night he'd graduated. How he'd broken into the Hokage's Library and stolen not just one scroll, but two. How one scroll had given him the ability to create solid bunshin, and how the other had given him some very good friends.

Shikamaru had thought that perhaps that scroll had been a storage scroll – despite what some inexperienced shinobi thought, it _was_ possible to seal away a human being; it was just a near-impossible task, and severely frowned upon – or a summoning scroll – not from the Summon Dimension, no, but from some other chosen point across the world, sure. But when Naruto began to _describe_ his 'friends', tell how they were, he found his initial assumptions shot down straight to hell.

With one mind concentrating on Yamanaka Nyoko and another on Naruto, Shikamaru had listened as the unusually-serious chronic prankster went in-depth describing some of the things that went into the making of the so-dubbed 'Shinobi's Scroll'. He told of the enormous amount of seals that had to be drawn and powered and constantly regulated by its occupants in order for them to stay as they were. He told of an ability to draw, and an awareness of time, of interaction between themselves and the outside world, and of a strange/'totally lame' memory gap between their former lives' years and the present. He told them that they knew who they were, but could not speak of it, and that they wanted him to figure it out; he didn't know if they'd be able to talk about it after he'd solved it or not, but he also said it was okay either way.

He asked Inoichi if he knew of a procedure that could bind minds/souls/whatever to an object like this, or if it was possible without reducing the former/actual occupant into a mindless/soulless/whatever-less husk. He asked if it could be done with a jutsu – or more likely, a large multiple of jutsu – or if Sealing was a more likely avenue.

Inoichi had answered –

"Shikamaru-kun."

He groaned pitifully and pressed the pillow hard against his face for a moment before whipping it off and sending a baleful glare at the old woman. Was it _absolutely impossible_ for a Yamanaka to just _shut up_ for a period of time _longer _than three and a half _fucking _minutes? His headache had _just_ started fading, and he was _just_ starting to calm down, and he was _just_ starting to lose himself in the comforting familiarity of his thought process, when she decided that she just _had _to say something.

_Kami_, he hated this family.

On a good note, Yamanaka Nyoko didn't slap him silly for his glare. On a bad note, she opened her mouth and continued talking. "Have you decided who you might want to Transfer to?"

He stared at her for a long moment. His lips pressed into a thin line.

His thoughts whirled.

Ambition. Resolve. Determination. Skill. Plus a definite lack of the higher intellects. These were the things, the traits, the aspects of personality and of being that Shikamaru wanted in his Transfer-ee; if there wasn't someone with those things – _all _of them – then there was no one for him to Transfer to, simple as that.

They had to be ambitious; if they had no ambition, they had no reason to use his intellect to their advantage, no higher goal to get to.

They had to be determined, had to have firm resolve; it would not do for them to give up before they reached their ultimate goals.

They had to have the skill; if they did not have skill, or, rather, did not have the ambition or determination to _attain_ such skill as was necessary, then there was no way for them to reach their goal.

They had to be less intelligent; not stupid, not brain-damaged, but they also could not be a genius; what sort of genius wants to use, wants to rely on the genius of _another_ to make their own mark on the world? No, the gift of his intellect would have to make a large impact on the person in question, and for that to happen they had to be just plain average.

But who among his generation fit those criteria?

His mind first jumped to Kiba. Inuzuka Kiba, son of Inuzuka Tsume, scourge of every clean and hygienic shinobi in the land. Particularly frowned upon by the Hyuuga, tight-assed as they were. Kiba had plans of ruling his clan one day, and wanted to push for getting a Clan seat on the village council – Konoha rule stated that, to lobby for a Clan or Family seat on the council, there had to be a record of two generations, or of one generation for ten-plus years, living within the Village Hidden in the Leaves; Tsume had been in Konoha for sixteen, almost seventeen years, and had arrived in the middle of the War. Her petitions for a seat had gone unnoticed or, more likely, ignored.

Kiba was brazen, and loudmouth, and uncivilized. He was dirty, smelly, rude, and most times he ate his meals with his hands. But that seemed to be the norm in the Inuzuka clan – and maybe it was okay to have a few of those sorts of people in such a large village as Konoha; balance out the neat-freaks.

So he wasn't the best of people. But, then, being good, or clean, or mannered, were not any of the necessary traits Shikamaru was looking for. Kiba had ambition – rule his clan, get a seat on the council, become the best shinobi he can. He had determination – that bullheaded sort of determination that only idiots had, idiots who didn't understand that the world worked a certain way and who tried to ignore all those rules and plow their way through logic and rationality and forge their own path. And on that note, he had the unintelligence that was needed, too. He had skill – not the greatest of skill, but he did show a knack for learning his clan jutsu, and his relationship with his ninken, Akamaru, was better than most people had with a best friend; and, again, he had that determination to become the best he could that could more than make up for any deficits in his skill set.

Shikamaru frowned.

Just from the people in his graduating class, there were a few guys to choose from; there were a few girls as well, but there was something strange and personal and invasive and perverted and _weird_ about transferring _his_ intellect into some _girl_. Either way, Yoro Yumi was on that list. Fun, bubbly, delightfully perverted, Yumi was the embodiment of cheer; she was fiercely protective of Sakiten Takato almost to the point of insanity, and, in a battle situation, would gladly and immediately sacrifice herself for him if necessary. He wasn't sure if it was an insane fangirl-type crush, if it was some stalker-obsession, or if it was actually a more mature-ish form of love, but Yumi would do anything for Takato, that much was evident.

As far as Shikamaru could tell, that was her only goal in life – and while it was a good goal to have, it lacked the ambition that was needed for her to skip to the top of the list of choices. She wasn't all that smart, which was good. She had talent beneath her lackadaisical manner – surprisingly, Yumi had turned out to be the Genjutsu prodigy of their year, and it was to the wonder of many that she hadn't been placed on Team 8 under Yuuhi Kurenai. There was a rumor that she mostly used that skill to weave together dirty fantasies for her and her boy-toy; considering how she was, it wouldn't surprise anyone if that turned out to be true. And she had the determination of…well, metaphors aside, she had the _insane_ determination to protect said boy-toy at all costs, which was good – just not quite enough.

Unbidden, his mind crept into the past and he remembered several instances where she had done so, much to the ire of their classmates. When Takato'd been sitting next to Sasuke, and his fan club wanted to have that seat vacated immediately; they hadn't bothered asking, and had instead just tried grabbing and pushing him out of it. Yumi hadn't liked that, and to this day, the Sasuke Fan Club remained distinctly wary of her; not scared, but definitely cautious.

Kiba had had several mean streaks in the past against quite a few people, not excluding Takato and Yumi both; they'd both admirably defended the other when they fell under insult and mockery, and Kiba had been withdrawn for a good few days after both incidents by his mother – word was, she ran him ragged; worked him hard, worked him late, and made him damn _glad_ to be able to attend school, if for no other reason than to _not_ work for the entire day.

Naruto, though, got it worst, especially after his tenth birthday when he blew up the men's toilets and Takato got nailed by a chunk of –

…

…hmm.

* * *

Hmm.

Yamanaka Inoichi was intrigued.

Now, this was not a regular occurrence; Inoichi, as with the other members of the Ino-Shika-Cho trio, was a fairly relaxed individual, who liked little more than to have his work finished for the day so he could spend time with his wife and beautiful daughter, and grab a drink with the guys before hitting the hay. There weren't a lot of things that could garner his attention, let alone his interest, and that was a pretty sad fact when part of your job was to interrogate prisoners and look out for treachery within the ranks of Konoha – despite his attentiveness and unmatched skill to his job, none of it was all that _interesting_, despite how much of a necessary, very-important, war-avoiding, conflict-squashing kind of job it was. It had been a very long time, indeed, since something had captivated him quite like this…

He tapped his index finger lightly against the parchment.

_Spitfire says that the mind-walker had better have washed those hands after that brief retreat to the bathroom._

Fascinating.

_Sparky reckons he did; Yamanaka are pretty clean people. At the very least, they like to keep their hands sterile; some weird parallel-bridge between classic surgery and their mind-diving adventures._

Truly fascinating.

"And you say you obtained this from the Hokage's Library?" Inoichi asked, carefully rolling the scroll closed.

Naruto nodded rapidly. "Yeah. When I was assigned to lift the Forbidden Scroll by that bastard fake-sensei Mizuki." He chewed his lip for a moment and added, "It was the only one I found that didn't have a title or a description or anything. I was interested," he concluded with a shrug.

"It's quite a gem," he said admiringly. "I've never seen anything like it." Naruto grinned. "Which makes it that much harder to tell you that I cannot offer you any further assistance."

"What? Why?"

Inoichi leaned forward in his chair and clasped his hands together. He met Naruto's confusion and shock and surprise with a steady, calming gaze, and Naruto, the ever-restless one, quieted down beneath it. "I've told you what I could figure out based on your descriptions of the scroll and my own personal interactions; I've told you my own hypotheses of how it may have been created based upon my admittedly-limited knowledge of Sealing; I've assured you that, to my knowledge, the Yamanaka were not involved in its formation, nor did they have any idea of such a thing happening; I've given you my professional opinions of your friends based upon their personalities and how I've interacted with them, and I've theorized their character as best I could with what I've been given. But beyond a bit of simple parting advice, that's all I can do for you."

"But – but – but there's those jutsu that you guys can do, right? Your mind-jutsu-things? Why can't you use one of those and, like, use it to get into their heads or something?" Inoichi was shaking his head before he finished speaking.

"Our Clan Jutsu are useless here. There has to be a physical body in order for us to enter the corresponding spiritual. I cannot walk a mind if there is no _actual_ mind; and though they are consciousnesses, and they have all the properties necessary to be categorized as such, they are not true minds, and they do not have true mindscapes for me to travel across."

Naruto scowled. "So you're telling me that I came over here and wasted about half-an-hour of my life before you told me that you can't do what I came here to ask you to do. Great."

Inoichi sent him an apologetic smile. "Sorry, Naruto-kun," he said, reaching out and ruffling the boy's hair. The boy in question batted at his hand and gave him a half-hearted glare.

"Well, then, what's that parting advice you have for me?" Naruto asked, sullen.

Inoichi tapped his finger against the table, once, twice, three times, and said, "I was going to suggest that you go check out the library."

Naruto's face scrunched up in distaste. "I _hate_ the library," he muttered. "Nothin' but boring, dusty, useless old scrolls."

Inoichi chuckled. "There's a lot more than that, Naruto; you can't avoid the library forever just because of one little failure."

"It wasn't _little_."

His mirth left him; "No," he said, quieter, "I don't suppose it was."

"Do you s'pose…" Inoichi looked up at the boy. "Do you think – I mean…" he trailed off, and made a frustrated noise. He crossed his arms over his chest tightly and scowled. "Do you think that–"

"_**WHAT?"**_

Naruto's mouth, still open from his unfinished question, stayed open for another few seconds before he closed it, puzzled. His first thought had been that Inoichi had become unfairly and outrageously impatient and had just yelled at him; but that wasn't right, because the man hadn't even opened his mouth, and was looking just as puzzled as he was. That only left a handful of people – and when the light bulb in his brain flickered on, he realized that it had been a girl that yelled. At least, that's what he was hoping, because it was either that, or Shikamaru was a lot more feminine than anyone suspected. Since there were only two chicks in the household, his brain narrowed the list down to one, based on age and the possibility that some old bat could yell that loud and sound that young, and came to the conclusion that Inoichi's daughter was a very, very loud person.

Not the most startling of conclusions.

He glanced at Inoichi, who was looking curiously up at the ceiling towards a lot of thump-and-scuffling noises. Now in 'mildly concerned parent' mode, Inoichi stood up and walked into the hallway and peered up the staircase. "Ino?" he called. "Ino-chan? What on earth are you yelling about?"

The next little bit happened very fast: Naruto became aware of several loud _thumps_ coming from the staircase-direction, something that sounded an awful lot like his name was shouted to the heavens (because, shouting it that loud, where else would it be aimed towards?) like a very vile curse, he saw blonde, and purple, and then the world flipped itself around him and there was a loud tearing noise and suddenly he was outside, lying on the grass with a very, very angry Yamanaka Ino straddling his waist.

"You – damn – _idiot!"_ she yelled, grabbing him by the lapels of his very-orange jacket and jerking him upwards once before slamming him back down to the grass.

"What'd I do?"

"You're not _going_ to do it if you know what's _good for you!_" Ino snarled right back, pushing him into the grass and dirt.

" Not gonna do _what?"_

"I am _not_ going to let you turn _my teammate_ into _you!"_

"_What? _What are you _talking_ about?" Naruto flailed helplessly. "Yamanaka-san – _Inoichi_! Get your crazy-ass daughter off me!"

"No, I'm okay, thanks," came Inoichi's voice from the extra-large hole in his front door.

"You son of a _bitch!"_

"Ino-chan, honey," came Inoichi's voice again, "tell Naruto that it's not polite to call people names."

"I'm gonna get you for this! I'm gonna get you _so – OW!"_ Naruto yelped as Ino jerked him back and slammed him to the ground again; his head bounced painfully off the hard-packed dirt.

"_Don't_ swear at my Daddy," Ino growled threateningly, "and that's _not_ what we're _talking about."_

"What _are _we talking about?"

Ino bared her teeth at him, and clenched her jaw so hard he could actually hear her teeth grinding together; she looked furious, and based on past experience, she looked like she wanted little more than to beat him to a bloody pulp. Expecting an explosive onslaught of small, delicate, and painful fists, Naruto braced himself.

So he was very surprised when no wild-fury-fueled beating came, and she instead gave an angry snarl, shoved him to the ground once more, and got to her feet. His surprise settled down to moderate understanding when she turned her head towards the house and yelled, "Nara! _Get your ass out here!"_ Because there was only one person in the world that could make Ino so very angry, and that was Nara Shikamaru.

It took a very slow and painful two minutes before the figure of the village's laziest shinobi slouched into view. Every little part of him, from his posture, to his expression, to the reluctant way he was walking, stated loud and clear that he really, really did not want to be a part of this, and would much rather be doing something else – like turning around and walking in a straight line for several hundred kilometers until he collapsed from exhaustion. He stopped at the door and looked at the very large exit hole that Ino had made several moments previously through the paper screen; a small and rare smile flickered across his lips before he sighed deeply and clambered through the hole, and walked over to his teammate.

"What," he said, voice flat.

"Tell. Him._ Now."_

By this time, Naruto had clambered back to his feet and was standing uneasily in place, looking as if he'd rather take off running than stand there much longer. But when Shikamaru sighed and looked over at him, he froze in place. Shikamaru gave the feral Ino one more glance – she snarled at him, like a rabid dog – before lurching over a few meters to stand in front of Naruto. Naruto, for his part, was standing straight and still as a post.

"So…" Naruto said "…I assume I'm 'him'?"

Shikamaru's lips twitched upwards, and he nodded wearily. "Yeah."

"And…what is it that you're supposed to tell me, that's got Ino all…"

"Psychotic," Shikamaru supplied helpfully.

"I was gonna say crazy-insane-what-the-fuck-koo-koo-bananas, but that works too."

Another smile tugged briefly at his lips before dropping. "She wants me to tell you that I was planning, through an old, heavily-frowned-upon Yamanaka Clan Jutsu, to transfer my intelligence over to you."

Naruto blinked once, then twice. "Uh…" Another blink. "That…_sounded_ like a joke…but unless you've been practicing your poker face with Shino, then-"

"It's not a joke, Naruto."

"Oh." He scratched at his head. "Well…I guess my first question should be _why_, but I'm going to go ahead and ask – are you really _smart_ enough to go and lend me a few of your IQ points?"

"I have an IQ well over 200."

Silence.

"You – you're doing that serious-face thing again, and I really can't tell whether you're joking or not," Naruto said, frowning.

"Still not joking."

"Oh." Scratch, scratch. "So you're…what, some kind of undercover genius?"

A very long sigh. "Something like that."

"Too troublesome?"

A smile. "Yeah."

Ino, a few meters away, made a sound like a growl, a snarl, and the combined screams of one hundred hell-bound souls. Clearly a cue for them to get on with it.

Shikamaru shot her a glare – truly, a fearless being was he – before turning back to Naruto. "I don't like being intelligent, I don't want to be intelligent; I'm far more open to the idea of giving it to someone who might actually use it. Someone who, no offense, could use a boost in the IQ department, someone who has an ambition that would put it to good work, such as being Hokage, someone who was skilled enough that he wouldn't go and die out on a mission and waste this little action; you're bullheaded enough that you won't die until you've gotten to where you want to be, simply out of sheer stubbornness." He gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I want to get to get to chuunin in a few years, then settle down with a normal wife, have a family, and coast at some easy, stress-free chuunin-rank job until my son becomes a shinobi and makes it to jounin. After that, I'll retire, and take care of my family until I die. After my wife." He gave another shrug. "You don't need much intelligence to do that. It'd be better off with someone else."

"And by 'someone else', you mean me," Naruto said.

"Not exclusively, although you are the leading candidate, yes."

There was another silence; awkward, this time. Uncomfortable. Stifling. Naruto shifted from one foot to another, frowning at the grass, trying to think of something to say. Shikamaru looked up at the clouds and suddenly he didn't seem too perturbed about much of anything anymore.

It would have gone on like that for a half-hour, at least, had the only female in the direct vicinity chosen to stay as quiet as her two male counterparts. Sadly, this was not to be. After the silence had passed the two-minute mark, Ino, jaw clenched and teeth grinding and hands just _aching _to be wrapped around their throats – at this point, she wasn't too choosy about which one went first – stalked up to Naruto, right up into his personal space, and grabbed his collar.

Naruto, startled, looked up from a very interesting patch of grass into the soulless eyes of the sole female of Team 10. It was not a pretty sight, and he immediately tried to look back down to the grass but found the sight blocked by her feet, legs, waist, torso, flat-chest…her whole body, really. He tried to take a leaf from Shikamaru's book and tried looking up skywards, but a vicious downward jerk on his jacket collar nixed that idea.

When Ino was quite certain that she had Naruto's _full_ attention, she told him, very slowly, very clearly, "You. _Will not_. Be doing it. _Got it?"_

Naruto, for his part, _did_ get it. It wasn't a very hard thing to _get_, really. Don't get Shikamaru's intelligence – Ino doesn't tear throat out with teeth. Simple.

"Absolutely," he said.

"_Good."_

And with one last, chilling glare in Shikamaru's direction, she opened the totally-ruined front door, stepped through, and closed it with a sharp _snap._

Naruto looked over at Shikamaru and raised an eyebrow. Shikamaru shrugged. Naruto nodded.

"So you're not gonna do it?" the undercover genius asked tiredly.

"Nah," Naruto said, waving his hand flippantly.

"If this is because of Ino being in her psychotic-threatening-mode, I can assure you that that'll only last for about a month before she chills out and accepts it." The fact that the object of her rage, which at that point would more likely be Naruto than him, would probably be in the hospital for the following year was left unsaid.

"Nah, not really. I mean, sure, it was kind of terrifying, and there was a little bit there where I was frightened for my life, but that's actually got nothing to do with it."

Shikamaru furrowed his brow and frowned. "Really." So Naruto was willingly shooting the offer down…why?

"Yeah. See, I had a few minutes to think about this whole thing."

"And that's all you needed to come to – quite possibly – one of the most important decisions of your life."

"Apparently," Naruto said with a shrug and a very sheepish smile. Shikamaru grunted, though the specific meaning of the grunt was difficult to interpret.

He followed the grunt with an annoyed-tinged, "Let me hear it, then."

"Well," Naruto said, pausing to swallow and wet his lips, "it's not that I'm not grateful, and surprised, and absolutely what-the-hell stunned by your, um, offer, because, well, I _am_." He gave off a nervous-sounding laugh. "But I don't really don't want it." Shikamaru raised an eyebrow, requesting further explanation – Naruto didn't hesitate to do so. "I mean, I _do_ kinda want it, just a little, but that's _natural _– I mean, you're basically saying, 'hey, in one quick, easy procedure, I could turn you into one of the smartest guys in Konoha, how does that sound to you?', and who wouldn't, who _hasn't_ wanted that before?" His hands gestured wildly in the air. "I'll tell you, if you'd come and approached me with this after _any_ Academy Test – paper or Genin – I think I woulda said 'yes' in a heartbeat."

"And if I were capable of traveling through _time_, I'm sure that information would be extremely useful to me."

Naruto blinked rapidly, and a grin bloomed on his face – Shikamaru _was _actually capable of 'funny'. "Yeah, too bad about that," he said with a chuckle. "But now, I've grown up; I've matured a little since then."

"Since a week-and-a-half ago?"

"Okay, a _very_ little, but that's _so _totally not the point I'm trying to make here."

"And that point is…"

"That it's not that I don't _want _your help in getting me to where I want to be – I just don't want to do it the way you're talking about. That it's not that I don't want assistance – I just don't want to have _so much _assistance that I go up the ladder on someone else's shoulders." He made a face. "It wouldn't be right."

Shikamaru frowned his displeasure and said, voice low, "Normally, this is where I would get into a philosophical argument on what exactly 'right' was, and turn the argument around and eventually bully the person opposing me – in this case, _you _– into agreeing with what I want from them." Then his shoulders slumped, just a little, and the brief flicker of fire fled from his voice. "But I don't suppose I could do that with a bull-headed idiot like you."

"Hey, I didn't insult _you_, ya bastard. And you don't have to get your underwear all twisted up into knots about his, you know."

"So I should be doing cartwheels down the street instead?"

"No – you know, try to be positive about it. Find the bright side, and all that jazz." Naruto's fingers added a little flutter to highlight the final word.

"Transferring my intelligence to you through judicial uses of highly-questionable Yamanaka jutsu _was_ me being positive about it." The fire that had flickered before began burning once more, hotter, as the words began pouring out of the young genius' mouth. "It was my bright idea, my bright side, my light at the end of the tunnel. Doing it would have allowed me to live my life as I truly wanted, would have let me avoid becoming as miserable as every other human wretch in the world. And with you, my best candidate, saying 'No' straight out, I am suddenly feeling very terribly annoyed and disgustingly depressed about this entire ridiculous situation. Now, would you care to tell me something positive about _anything _I have just said?" When Naruto scrunched up his face and appeared to be seriously be trying just that, Shikamaru sighed; sighed deeply, as if he were intentionally trying to completely empty his lungs of air. "Just forget it."

"No, come on!" Naruto protested loudly. "The only reason I'm saying 'no' in the first place is because I want to achieve my goals by my _own_ merits, not by somebody else's – that's practically cheating!"

"Sharingan."

"Now you're just talking crazy, there's no _way_ that's cheating."

Shikamaru gave a quiet snort of presumably-laughter before giving his head a little shake and larger yawn. "Well," he said. "I suppose that's that." He scratched idly at his jawline, muttering, "Guess I'll find the next on the list, then…" He turned and started walking away.

Naruto frowned and trod after him. When they were level, Shikamaru looked over at him from the corner of his eye, yawned again, and gave a one-shouldered shrug, not breaking stride.

After a few minutes of walking in relative silence, Naruto spoke up.

"Hey, Shikamaru?"

"Yeah."

"You said that you wanted to make me smart so you wouldn't be anymore…and you said _why_, but it still – it-" he frowned again, deeper "-it, just, still just doesn't make sense to me."

A sigh. "It's no secret that I'm the 'laziest sonofabitch across three Countries', as it was once put. My dreams, hopes, and aspirations are every bit as lazy and unimaginative and simple as I am."

"But you're _not_ simple," Naruto protested.

"But I _want_ to be," Shikamaru shot back.

"_Why?"_ Naruto practically yelled, stopping and stomping a foot on the ground in a fit of childish frustration; he crossed his arms and glared at his dark-haired counterpart. _"Why_ do you want so bad to be simple? You want to be stupid so you can get a mediocre life – _why?_ If you want to throw away everything that you could become and settle for less, than _fine_, but that does _not_ mean you have to go and shell out the _one thing about you _that makes you so freakin' unique!"

"Just because it's a part of who I am does _not_ mean I should have to deal with it if _I don't want it_."

"_Why don't you want it?"_

"Because I'm a terribly lazy-"

"-than why are you like _that?"_

"You imitate those that you look up to," Shikamaru said, his voice sharp despite the subject matter, "from the job they hold to the example they show, to the friends they have to the people they marry. You might not consciously realize it, but it happens all the time. My father was my role model, and when he was a kid, he had the exact same goals as I do today: reach chuunin, relax, get married to some easygoing civilian chick, have a kid, retire when the kid – that was I, at the time – hits jounin. The only reason he couldn't follow all of those was because of the War; it screwed up a lot of things, and before he knew it, he was a jounin, leader of a team, married to some short-tempered restaurant owner that he'd met and bedded on an outside mission. Everything he wanted, really, was down the drain at that point, and he raised me up with his goals in mind, wanted me to have what he was not able to get. His dreams, his path through life, became mine."

"But you are _not_ your father! Why the hell should you live like he _wants _you to? Why can't you live like _you _want to?"

"That _is_ how I want to live, Naruto! Just because he wants me to live one way doesn't mean I can't want to live that way as well!"

"Oh my _god!"_ Naruto cried out in frustration, throwing his hands into the air briefly before clutching his head and growling. He took several deep breaths before allowing himself to look back up at the Nara. A frown slashed across his lips, and his eyes were hard. "If this were about your father wanting you to live _your_ life a certain way, I wouldn't have a problem with it – or, at least, not as _much_ of a problem with it. But Shikaku-san is not wanting you to live your life, he's wanting you to live _his._"

He gave a disgusted-sounding sigh and shook his head. "Fuck this," he said, running a hand through his messy blonde hair. "If you want to do it, I can't stop you. But it's the stupidest shit I've ever heard." He turned a sharp 180 and started walking away. His hands were fisted at his sides, his shoulders straight, tight. "I hope you're not a drooling vegetable the next time I see you."

And he left, leaving Shikamaru to stare after his retreating back.

* * *

"Welcome back."

"Great to be here again, Hokage-sama." A pause. "So, why _am _I here again? We don't do mission debriefing until high C-classes, or in extenuating circumstances – neither of which has happened around me in the past week."

"Kakashi, something has recently come to my attention regarding one of your students' welfare."

Kakashi blinked. Welfare? What did that even _mean?_ Was it, like, their overall health? As far as he knew, none of them had broken any bones recently, or gotten beat up by a drunkard, or gotten decapitated. Of course, he hadn't seen any of them for the entire day, so he supposed anything was possible. Maybe it meant how they were doing. Wel-fare; how well they were faring? No, words didn't just get smashed together like that to make a new one. That would be silly.

Seeing Kakashi's blank look, Sarutobi Hiruzen elaborated. "Conditions of living," he said. "Their physical health, their mental health, their general state of being."

Oh. Well, maybe words _did_ get smushed together. How strange. "I knew that," Kakashi said, pushing some petulance into his voice.

"Of course you did," Sarutobi responded, not sounding the least bit condescending. Kakashi pouted. "Now, the student in question is one Uzumaki Naruto, whom we both have some extended experience with. He came to me a number of days ago with an informal complaint about his jounin-sensei."

Kakashi blinked again. A complaint? What the hell did Naruto have to _complain_ about? The kid had it a lot better than he had at his age; he hadn't even had to kill anyone yet.

His mind gave a sort of shrug; at least it was an informal complaint, his mind said. A formal complaint, no matter how little, would have gotten entered into his record. Of course, with how many complaints Kakashi had in his record – mostly about unprofessionalism on the job public indecency – one little student's bitching wouldn't make too much of a black mark, but hey. He did have _some_ sort of reputation to uphold, right?

As he tried to think of exactly what kind of reputation he was supposed to be upholding, Kakashi said, "Oh?"

"Yes," Sarutobi replied. "Oh." He flipped open a small folder on his desk and perused its contents. "Naruto said that you accosted him at two o'clock in the morning approximately one week ago-"

_Oh,_ that's what this was about. And it was one fifty-three!

"-and 'forced him', via threat of several explosive-note-laden kunai, to run laps around the village until he eventuallypassed out from exhaustion. Your actions caused damage to several properties, Uzumaki Naruto's apartment being the most extensive."

_Uh-oh._

"From the account, and based upon what I saw when I went over for a look, one kunai, explosive note attached, hit the apartment's outer wall and detonated; one third of the entire wall was demolished, taking out a window, several plants of personal value to Uzumaki Naruto, and tearing through an ill-placed water pipe; the burst water pipe then proceeded to pump gallons of water into the apartment, ruining a number of Uzumaki Naruto's belongings."

He didn't like where this was going.

"There was also report of further leakage on the floor below – more water damage." The file was closed with a snap, and the old Hokage met his subordinates eyes. "I have a budget that covers shinobi-involved accidents. I have limited medical insurance for my shinobi, jounin-level and up. I have a special stipend that gives aid to un-adopted orphans. There are numerous things I use the tax money for, numerous things I am allowed to brush under the rug because of who I am and what I have done; but _this,"_ he said, tapping the file with a long, thin finger, "is not going to be magicked away like that. Because it was not an accident, and because there is someone wholly responsible for the damages."

This was so totally unfair.

"I'm afraid you won't be seeing much of your paychecks for a while, Kakashi."

He felt like crying.

* * *

Stupid Shikamaru. Stupid IQ scores. Stupid paper-screen-door.

Naruto kicked savagely at a small rock in his path, and watched vindictively as it sped down the road.

Stupid Inoichi. Stupid old lady. Stupid rock.

He kicked the rock again as he came up to it, and got to watch it tumble away from him once more.

Stupid Yamanaka. Stupid mind-transfer-jutsu. Stupid _library_.

His foot lashed out and hit the rock again, and it soared into the air and away until he couldn't see it anymore.

If there was one thing in the _entire village_ that Uzumaki Naruto could truthfully say that he hated, it would be the public library.

He gave a grunt and shifted his thoughts a little; he didn't hate the library, per se, so much as he hated a particular _part_ of the library. The Konoha Public Library was divided into three separate sections, each fairly large in their own right and, being under one roof, made the library one of the largest buildings in Konoha. The first section was the Civilian library, which held everything from cookbooks, to 'how to' books, to world maps, and whatever else it was those crazy civilians needed from the library – Naruto wasn't really entirely sure, as he'd only ever seen ninja in there.

The second section was, of course, the Shinobi library. It, too, held such mundane things as cookbooks and 'how to' books (only_ ninja-fied_; example: grilling steaks in a ninja-fied cookbook involves, not a barbeque grill or an open fire like in the civilian copy, but a number of Katon jutsu, and tips on better controlling that flame; some of the best cookbooks could actually double as training manuals), but it also held things like shinobi erotica (of which the Icha Icha series was the most popular), publically-released jutsu scrolls (the greatest collection this side of Fire Country), weapons manuals (some of them were worn, torn, and dirty, and the pages stuck together for some strange reason whenever that little Tsume girl checked them out), and every single release of the shinobi 'bingo book' – from the first volume, published almost thirty years ago, all the way to volume two-hundred-thirty-seven, published three days ago. Being of a slightly more dangerous nature, the section was patrolled by one special jounin in order to keep out unwanted guests, small children, rowdy library-goers, and any foreign shinobi (if they were stupid).

The third section was the smallest, and was tucked into the back corner, farthest from the front doors in every possible way. Like the Shinobi section, it had a single patrolling special jounin at all times, on six-hour shifts, in order to protect some of the slightly-more-sensitive information that was held within. The information in question happened to be general censuses of the Konohagakure population; the census was taken near the end of each year, one for the civilian population, one for the shinobi, and while the original copies were squirreled away to one of several hidden rooms of the Hokage, the edited versions were sent to this third section.

It was this section of the library, the Konoha Population Archives, that Naruto had a problem with. Hell, if there was a term more extreme than 'problem', than that was exactly what he had with the Archives. He hadn't entered the library for the last five years because of it, after all.

Naruto scowled and kicked at ground, sending up a spray of dust and pebbles.

But _that_, apparently, was Inoichi's so-very-wise advice to him._ 'Go check out the library.'_ Yeah, great, wonderful. If it were any place else, he'd be okay, happy even, to go and check wherever-it-may-be out for help. But…

He sighed in frustration and ran a hand through his hair.

…if he was ever going to be serious about discovering the Pranksters' identities, he was going to have to look through the Archives.

He stopped walking and looked around.

The Konoha Public Library stood, in all its splendor and library-ness, right in front of him. He scowled up at it, then looked down at his feet. "How the hell do you guys know _exactly _what I'm thinking?" he asked them; they didn't answer back. Shrugging, he shook his head, and walked through the large double-doors.

As his eyes adapted to the change of light, he looked around; and the first thing, the one thing that managed to cut through his obvious distaste of the place, was how _different _it was from back then. It looked…_good_. No more peeling paint or broken beams. No cobwebs. It smelled nice, too. And there were a lot more people; not just adults, like it had been before, but kids, too, of a wide variety of ages. Young ones, younger than him. Either those were really dedicated Academy students, or the library must have put up a children's section at some point. The thought almost made him smile.

He walked through the extra-large room, weaving in between patrons, tables, and the occasional midair book or scroll, relaxing just a little more with each step he took. With all the doom and gloom and bad memories hanging around him like a proverbial storm cloud, he'd completely forgotten that the library could actually be a _good_ place; a place of peace, and of refuge. He might have to come here more often, after he'd faced his demons; turn all that darkness into light.

A sharp, stilted sort of movement, unnatural in the current environment, made itself known in his peripherals, and he turned his head to take a look. What met his eyes familiar, if nothing else: long overcoat hiding almost any hint of a body, poofy black hair held back by a shiny new hitai-ate, dark-tinted glasses completely obscuring the mysterious eyes beneath.

Naruto looked at Aburame Shino, and Aburame Shino looked back. Separate from the white noise of the public around them, a soft hum began to fill the air.

"Hey, Shino."

Shino nodded stiffly. "Naruto."

A short silence. "D'you come here often?"

"If one should seek wisdom," Shino said, his voice crisp and clear, "one should go to where wisdom resides." His head inclined towards Naruto – who looked rather confused at the fact that someone like Shino had not immediately answered a direct question – for a brief moment before he continued with, "I frequent the public library at most available chances. The pursuit of knowledge is not something that should be put off for another day."

Naruto frowned a little bit; was he being told something important under thinly-veiled subtext, or was he just feeling really guilty/annoyed about not coming to the library sooner? "I suppose," he said aloud. He looked around and asked, "Are you here with your team? Or is it just you?"

"Kiba and Hinata-san are seated at a table further in to the library. I had wanted a map of the Elemental Countries in order for us to tutor Kiba on the finer points of war tactics and, as such, had left them in order to procure a copy. I was just heading back when…" he trailed off and motioned to Naruto, who only then realized that Shino was holding a large-ish scroll in his left hand.

"Oh," Naruto said.

"Will you be joining us?"

Naruto's head snapped up at the question, and he stared into the blacked-out glasses with no small amount of surprise. _"What?"_

Repetition was something a standard Aburame exceeded at, so it would have been no trouble whatsoever for Shino to simply repeat himself; instead, he chose to add a slight change to the wording. "Would you like to join us?" he asked calmly.

Naruto gaped a minute, then flushed and looked away.

Even if his life was a lot better now than it was way back when, it was still rare that someone would invite him to something. And he _would_ like to join creepy-smart Shino, and the ready-to-rumble Kiba, and the shy-for-whatever-reason Hinata for whatever it was they had going on, boring military strategies or not. He would like to do that; hell, he'd _love_ to do that, be included by his…team's…team…mates? Hell, save for Yumi – who wanted to destroy him with several well placed telephone poles – and Ino – who, at this point in time, seemed to want to tear his head off his shoulders and stick it on a pike – he'd be pretty okay with hanging out with any number of the graduating class. He'd be positively _thrilled_.

But…

His hand rested on his pants pocket, and felt the scroll within.

"_The pursuit of knowledge is not something that should be put off for another day."_

…he couldn't; not today.

His lips spread into an apologetic, but genuine, smile, and he said, "Maybe another time."

"Ah." Shino appeared to stand up a little straighter if that were possible. "You have more pressing matters to attend to?" Naruto, not noticing the faint change of tone, simply nodded. He glanced in the direction of the third section of the library, and Shino followed his gaze briefly before turning back. Blue eyes met black glass, and when Shino reached whatever conclusion he'd come to, he nodded. "Very well. It would be rude of me to take up any more of your time, so I shall allow you to return to your initial business, as I shall to mine." He inclined his head and said, "I wish you good luck on your endeavor."

Naruto nodded back and gave a lopsided sort of smile. "Yeah," he said, "you too." His smile turned mischievous, and he added, "You're gonna need it."

Shino let out the smallest of sighs, and Naruto was sure there was a smile on the lips hidden behind his collar. "Teaching Kiba anything should be a mission in and of itself," he murmured. Naruto grinned. "I shall see you another day, then," he said, giving one more respectful nod; he turned and began walking away, pace slow and measured.

"See you later, Shino," Naruto said, still smiling. He, too, turned away, and resumed his own walk. He passed rows of tables, and towering bookcases; unfamiliar faces were all around him, smiling faces, annoyed faces, faces locked in concentration. Books and scrolls were stacked in towers and piles on some tables, stretches of parchment filling half of the space and new-age pans, older used brushes, and even older ink wells (and ink stains) thrown wherever convenient. On others, lone children, lone adults, sitting straight in their chairs with a book held in front of them, lost within that literary world.

Row upon row, he passed each one, looking at every one and every thing; a title or a person would jump out at him – he'd need to read _100 Ways to Win Over Your Landlord_, and hadn't he seen that tall, purple-haired dude before? – and he'd grin and file it away for later; and before he knew it, he was there.

There was nothing particularly special about the door that separated the Shinobi Section from the Population Archives. It was made of a dark wood, was about two inches thick, and happened to be balanced very well on its oiled hinges. There was a small white plaque above the frame that stated 'Archives'. But that was about it. The door was always open, and he could easily make out the small, uncomfortable chair and table that the on-duty shinobi usually occupied.

Stale air blew gently out, and Naruto tried not to breathe it in; he hated that smell.

He closed his eyes briefly, and stepped through the doorway.

When he opened his eyes back up, he came face-to-face with death itself. Without thinking, he closed them again, tightly, made a noise like a cornered animal, and said, hurriedly, "I still don't have any money because we're still taking D-ranks and if you want to blame someone blame Kakashi and I would really prefer it if you didn't kill me!"

There was a humming noise; this was a lot better than the possibility of hearing the sound of a kunai getting stuck somewhere into his person, so Naruto cautiously opened his eyes. Seeing no one there immediately, he looked around; to his left, there was a very feminine figure bent over the small table. His ears managed to pick up the words "Glow-in-the-dark, indebted, pranking piece of shit, 14:37" overlaying the scratch of a pen on paper before the very feminine figure stood back up straight and turned back to him.

Naruto looked up at her, his bravery and courage fleeing to some remote region of his body – possibly his pancreas – and said, very weakly, "Hey, Anko."

"Brat," death itself, more commonly known as Mitarashi Anko, stated in greeting. Her voice was casual – but it was chilling in its ease. "I wasn't expecting to see you back here any time soon."

His body, tight with anticipation, relaxed when she didn't straight-out kill him as was expected; he sighed heavily and his shoulders slumped. "Neither was I," he muttered sourly, distaste overriding terror. "But some stuff's come up where…where I have to get some information."

Anko raised an eyebrow. "So you've quit the whole being-a-whiny-little-girl shtick and finally manned up?" Naruto glared at her in response, and she snorted. "About time your balls dropped, brat."

"That's really nice of you, Anko – very charming. Can I go look some people up now?"

Anko waggled a finger at him and then, suddenly she was holding a very ominous-looking kunai, which she then waggled at him as well. "Oh, no," she said, grinning. "You're not getting away that easily. You owe me a lot, kiddo – the least you can do for me right now is to share some interesting conversation; I'm practically falling asleep over here."

Naruto scowled at her, and his hand crept into his pocket to grip tightly onto the Shinobi's Scroll. "I don't _want_ to sit down and have a chat right now, you psychotic-"

He froze.

A very clear _thunk_ sounded through the room as a kunai embedded itself in the wall behind him; a thin line of blood opened up on his cheek.

Truthfully, he didn't even notice.

He had stopped talking because his mind caught up to what he was saying, and what he was about to say, and how that mirrored somebody else very closely: he was going to say 'you psychotic bitch', and his mind spat out the fact that, so long ago (had it only been a few days?), Hawkeye referred to the purple-haired special jounin as 'that psychotic bitch', too. His mind turned that fact around a little bit, and suddenly, he had something to talk about; something he _wanted_ to talk about.

"Hey, Anko?" Naruto asked, idly wiping the streak of blood off of his face. Anko, who was mildly confused at why he didn't shriek like a little girl when she threw a kunai _at his face_, raised an eyebrow in question. "Do you remember anyone that used to call you 'Little Anko' when you were young?" It was how the Pranksters – save Hawkeye – referred to the Snake Mistress; perhaps she'd remember them?

From the stupefied expression on her face, Anko hadn't been expecting that sort of question at all. She stared blankly at the smaller boy in front of her, and her hand came up, across her chest, and gripped at the back of her neck. "No," she said, her voice flat, as bleak and blank as her gaze. "No, I don't."

* * *

Across the library, deep within the bowels of section two and nearest to the very back wall, sat a table. At the table sat three people. One was very loud. One was very quiet. And one was not speaking at all.

Hyuuga Hinata was being patient. Her voice soft as ever, it hitched and stuttered when she spoke, her nerves obvious as she pointed to the map, tapping the former Whirlpool Village and tracing a finger across the waters and the land, through the Countries and past the borders until reaching Konoha. Her hands fluttered in the air as she spoke, pausing their flight to point at Iwa once, tap on this village or that, as she told her feral teammate some of the major events of the last War.

Inuzuka Kiba was being difficult. He kept trying to delve into the details of each of the battles – not to discover useful information on, say, tactics, or strategy, but to try and discern how many enemies were killed here, or there, and who had fought there, or where. He was being stubborn, insistent, and he was forcing Hinata to be just as stubborn in her teachings; some parts of this reaction were good, some bad.

Aburame Shino was being pensive. He had had another encounter with Uzumaki Naruto, and still he had not said anything. He had not said anything about the Kyuubi, or about the difference of a jailor and a jail, and he had not done anything about his strange-but-understandable empathy towards the blonde boy's situation.

He told himself that it had not been the right time to speak up, but – as he stared at the insects tumbling about his cupped hands – that did not make his reticence any more acceptable.

It did not make his disgraceful cowardice any easier to bear.

* * *

Ugh. This thing's been hanging over my head like some black fuckind cloud for the last few months. I haven't written, edited, reworked, and REwritten so much of a chapter since I've started fanfiction; it's exhausting. And it still didn't come out as good as it should have. Everything from about halfway on seems rushed, kinda stilted, even in this final copy...or is that just me bitching? I dunno...

Anyway. 12, part 2. LOT of shit going down in this chapter. Yamanaka history, followed by wtfshadowabilities, a chat with Inoichi, crazypsycho!Ino, an explanation from Shika, angry!Naruto, a visit to the library, an appearance of Team 8, and Anko's introduction (which seemed kinda tame to me...). And guilty!Shino. Poor Shino.

Shika's wtfshadow abilities have been nagging at me to be written since I got the first niggling of such an idea while writing out chapter 10. We'll have some Shika and Ino cutscenes next chapter, so they can properly reflect on what the hell happened at her house. And the reason for Naruto getting so (very, very, almost Out-of-Character) angry was because he is someone who believes in that little kid dream that you can be and do whatever you wish in this world, and that if you have the talent and skill to help people, you should _help people_. That Shikamaru pretty much outright refuses to do so gets under his skin, and when he finds out that Shikamaru isn't even properly living his own bleeding life, he just kind of loses it, and ends up throwing his hands up and walking off in an angry funk.

For those of you who wanted reparation for Kakashi fucking up Naruto's apartment, there you have it. As for Naruto's _Deal_ with the library Archives, that's something that'll get mentioned here and there, and won't become important until we get nearer to the end of this shindig; sometime around the Chuunin Exams, I should think.

Chapter 13 won't be up for another (longer) while, so try and be satisfied with this for now. I'm gonna take a good week or so off of this story - maybe try to muddle through Lollipops a little in that time. But I'll probably just read a buncha shit in that time...anyhow, Chapter 13: The Beginning of the So-Totally-Overdone Wave Mission! Coming eventually!

~ 30CK / troutpeoples


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